


Under Thunder And Rain

by SJtrinity



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: I guess this is what I do now, I work and write post-war fix-its, M/M, Post-World War II, other guys from Easy show up here and there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:48:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 45,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25953190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SJtrinity/pseuds/SJtrinity
Relationships: Joseph Liebgott/David Kenyon Webster
Comments: 29
Kudos: 61





	1. January, 1948 - Cambridge, MA

It was his own fault, David supposed, for allowing himself to get drawn into a debate with these, these _children_ in the first place. It was amazing, the divide in understanding that a handful of years and one war could create between men. He usually kept himself carefully removed from the more impassioned discussions of the lecture hall, and really, he appreciated Rutledge and his encouragement of open discourse, but some days he would sit and listen to his peers lob pretentious opinions across the room like sparring knives, and he would have to fight against a maddening urge to stand up and throw his desk over. He had fought that same feeling today, but had only partly mastered it, giving his opinion instead, which had been a monumental mistake, because David no longer had the strength for debates of that sort, couldn't muster any heat or weight to strengthen his words.  
But honestly, he'd never had the necessary stamina for a protracted battle, be it verbal or otherwise. A mediocre shot on his best days, only ever as courageous as the man beside him, why the hell had he done it? Why the hell had he done any of it? God, what he wouldn't give for a cigarette. But it was a filthy habit, and filthy habits had no place on these hallowed grounds.   
He was so mordant these days, he bored even himself. David stopped on the paved path, stepping to the side to avoid the hurried foot traffic, men moving as quickly as they could from one building to another. The cold in January was a misery, all its charm chased out with the old year. He tipped his head back, remembering how it had felt settled against the thick scratch of hay, the bump of his fingers against Van Klinken's as he passed him the remainder of his cigarette. That had been a good night. Sometimes he thought it had been one of the best nights of his life. But everyone else who might remember it fondly was dead.  
"'When I think of that my tongue's a stone,'" he intoned to no one, and a passing student threw him a mildly scandalized glance. David smiled at him, then moved on.   
He was through with classes for the day, and all he wanted was to collapse in his chair with a book and a stiff drink, but first he would have to make his way past the small excited crowd that had inexplicably gathered outside his House. David could hear raised voices, still short of shouting, but quickly working their way up to it. He briefly considered circling around to another entrance, but the event was remarkable enough for him to wander closer instead, stopping next to Peter, whose suite was just down the hall from his own.  
"What's all this?" He asked, shifting back and forth to try and get a better look. "Who is Anderson yelling at? He's spectacularly red." He grinned at Peter, who grinned back.  
"Some bum trying to waltz his way into Adams. Guess word's got around how they're letting anyone in these days, huh?" Peter could joke with impunity, first generation Irish Catholic that he was, admitted on a full scholarship.   
"Where have the high old standards gone," David murmured, still craning his neck. He had a fantastic view of Anderson's flushed face and furious expression, but the interloper was just a narrow backside. And really, what would it harm their gilded reputation to give a warm meal to a man down on his luck? The inhabitants of the wider world weren't experiencing this surreal version of life that Harvard's lucky few enjoyed. "Maybe someone should-" he started to say, and then he stopped, because the man had turned his head, revealing a sharp and sloping profile, jarringly familiar. "Someone should," he tried again, stuck, staring. He stood for a moment, then began shouldering his way forward.   
"Ken?" Peter said, his voice lifting up in confusion.  
"Hey, watch it," someone said as David shoved past. He ignored him.  
"Joe?" He said, scarcely believing. The man turned towards him. His lip curled up into something like a snarl, and David felt his stomach jump towards his chest. It was undeniably Liebgott.  
"Tell this guy I fucking know you, Web. What the hell is this, it's like a goddamn interrogation."  
"Liebgott, what - "  
"Sir, for the last time - "  
"Jesus, will you give it a rest?" He had a pack slung over his shoulder. He was wearing a billed winter cap, the ear flaps tugged down tight. His face beneath was pale, except for the pink of his nose.  
"Rob," David said, his sluggish brain slowly arriving behind the rest of him at the brewing situation and its implications. He stepped past Joe, who huffed loudly, bumping Anderson with his arm until they were turned away from the small crowd of onlookers. "I need a pass."  
"Are you serious? No."  
"Come on," David said, pacing his words to a slow, expectant drawl, _we understand each other, don't we?_ "We're both out of here in a few months. Where's the harm?" Anderson was shaking his head, so David changed tactics. "He's a friend of mine."  
"I'm sorry, Kenyon. There's no way." Anderson glanced over his shoulder at the watching students, slowly dispersing now that the shouting had stopped.  
"They've already lost interest," David said. "Here, we'll disappear for a couple of hours, and you won't hear another word about it, I promise. And I'll cover for you the next time Doro comes up to visit." Anderson looked doubtfully back and forth between him and Joe.  
"You two served together?" David nodded. "Fine. You owe me, Ken."  
"Thanks, Rob." They exchanged conspiratorial nods, and David turned back to Joe. "Let's go."  
"Where're we going?" Joe asked, but fell into step beside him. David didn't answer, leading him away from the Yard, towards the nearest trolley stop. He was still a little stunned, and it wasn't until they stopped together on the edge of the street and David checked carefully to either side, as if they were about to engage in some sort of clandestine act, that he finally looked at him again. Joe was watching him with a curled lip, amused dark eyes. David felt an embarrassed smile grow in answer on his own face.  
"Hey, Liebgott," he said.  
"Hey, Web," Joe answered in his soft scratch. "Good to see you."

* * *

  
David didn't know many spots around Cambridge that Joe wouldn't find insufferable, but he had been to a few taverns that he thought might fit the bill. He picked the one with the best food, and less than an hour later he and Joe were sitting together at a slanted table, David shoving the toe of his shoe up under the unbalanced foot to stop it from wobbling each time they moved.  
"How did you know where to find me?" He asked, watching Joe pull out two cigarettes and tuck one behind his ear. His hair was longer than David remembered, and hanging lank around his face.   
"Easy. I just asked the first person I saw where they put all their gasbag types, and he pointed me straight to your building."  
"Yes, but what if I hadn't gone back to Harvard?" Joe threw him a look like he might be the most idiotic person he'd ever known.  
"Yeah, right," he said in answer, tipping his head down towards his hand to light his smoke. "What's good here?"  
"Everything. But there's no menu, we just get whatever they make." He nodded towards the bar, where even now a man was coming around with two sets of foaming beers and large plates. "A bit like the army."  
"This whole place is a bit like the army, huh? Thanks." He didn't wait for the man to leave to continue, leaning on his elbow to look around him at David. "I mean come on, Web. You practically had to beg that guy to let you fuck off for a couple hours."  
Of course he'd heard that. David put the mug to his mouth, took two bracing gulps. "I'll be done with it soon enough," he said stiffly, setting it down and leaning back in his seat.   
"Jeez, you sure sound like you've been enjoying yourself. You look it, too." Joe's eyes raked over him and David crossed his arms and glared at him. "The good life not living up to all the talk?"  
"What talk? You're the one who did all the talking." He pressed on before Joe could snap something back at him. "And yes, it's a little stifling, alright? But I promised myself I'd finish."  
"Well that didn't take long." Joe was smirking in that infuriating way of his. He stubbed his cigarette out on the edge of his plate, even though there was a perfectly good ashtray at his elbow, and stuffed a forkful of fish into his mouth. David set his own mouth mulishly shut, refusing to step into another one of Joe's little verbal traps, but Joe didn't need to wait on him to spring it. "For you to admit that you hate goddamn Harvard." He raised his voice as he spoke, glancing around the room as if hoping someone might hear him and take offense.  
"I don't," David started, and then realized his own voice was too loud. "I don't hate it," he said more quietly. "I'm just ready to be done." He pushed at his food, his appetite gone. "This just. This can't be all there is, you know?" He glanced up, met Joe's dark gaze. Joe looked back at him for a long moment, then rolled his eyes and looked away.  
"Get used to it, Web," he said, popping a fry into his mouth.  
"Did you really come visit just to point out-" David forced his mouth shut with a click of teeth to stop himself from inadvertently admitting even more to Joe. It was a lost battle anyway. He had yet to manage anything better than drawing even in their disagreements, and besides, Joe was right. Some days David did hate it, and the rest of the time it left him unmoved. He'd been telling himself it would be different, after, but Harvard wasn't the problem, and somewhere in the back of his head he'd known that. Known, but hadn't wanted to acknowledge it. "To hell with it," he muttered, and tipped his head back to drain his mug.   
"Now we're talking," Joe said, grinning from the corner of his mouth as David lifted his empty glass to get the bartender's attention. "Hold on, let me catch up."   
Somewhere in the last two years, in the washed-out, scripted days, where David played the role of a half-remembered version of himself that was sometimes a comfort, but mostly loathsome, in memories of the war that veered back and forth between swamping loss and futile bitterness, somewhere, somehow, David had forgotten how much he enjoyed Joe's company. There had been a scant month, after Haguenau and before Landsberg, where they had gone together almost nightly to rub elbows with the wary locals, shouting out greetings and cheerful commands for food and drink. David's German was stilted and Joe's hybridized, but they made themselves understood. They had been impossibly crass and boorish, and David had never had more fun. But now, the both of them leaning forward towards each other across the table, their elbows bumping companionably together, bickering over every subject as they came to it, from the quality of the beer they were drinking, to the likelihood of extraterrestrials being involved in the crash in New Mexico, to whether or not David should be embarrassed by the pattern of his tie, now it all came back to him. How pithily funny Joe could be, the way he would snort and bury his nose in his drink when David managed to amuse him. How he sat with curled shoulders, hunkered down on himself, until he would suddenly unfurl with a burst of frenetic motion, usually in the middle of an impassioned statement about how goddamn ugly David's tie was. And later, walking back to the trolley through the dark and the biting cold, when Joe lurched into David's side and then reeled away again, laughing, David suddenly remembered the string of nights that they had stumbled along eerily empty roads together, arms held tight to their sides against the damp chill of the air, trying desperately to cling on to a fading feeling.  
"I'm drunk," he announced gravely. "Ich bin betrunken."  
"Shut up," Joe said, shoving him forward.  
In his room, David shrugged his coat and jacket off and collapsed back into his armchair with a groan, only half-aware of Joe turning on the light and closing the door behind them. "The bathroom's through there if you need it," he said, gesturing with one hand and pulling his tie loose with the other.   
"I'm showering," Joe answered, and David closed his eyes as he kicked his shoes off, listening to Joe enter the bathroom, the thump of his pack dropping to the ground, the clattering of the old pipes as the shower sputtered to life. He tried to picture Joe undressing but dozed off instead, and when he opened his eyes an unknown amount of time later Joe was standing over him, damp hair slicked back from his face, dressed in what appeared to be his old PT gear. Fondness moved torpidly through David's chest.  
"Liebgott," he said.  
"You look pretty settled in." Most people would probably dismiss Joe's voice as abrasive, but then, most people were pedestrian. David could listen to him talk for hours. "Stay there, I'll take your bed."  
"Enjoy the lumps," David said dryly. "Will you get the light?"  
"Yeah, yeah," Joe said, turning away. The light disappeared with a soft click, and David closed his eyes again and listened to Joe pick his way across the small room, smiling when he collided with the side table with a hissed, "Fuck!" He settled more deeply into the seat, wrapped his arms around himself, and fell asleep.  
When he woke, it was to the chiming of Memorial Hall, each lovely peal a strike against his head. "Oh, damn it," he muttered, pulling himself sluggishly upright from where he had collapsed down in an awkward sprawl across the arms of the chair.   
"Jesus," Joe said through the open door. "What the fuck is that?" David didn't answer, heaving himself up and into the room, past Joe's form on the bed. He opened his closet and pulled out a fresh shirt and trousers. "What're you doing?"  
"I have class." He grabbed a tie and flung it over his shoulder. "I'll be back this afternoon."  
"Just skip it," Joe said, imperious.   
"I can't."   
"You're kidding, right?" Baiting him again. David left the room, already resigned to a cold, hurried shower. He washed perfunctorily, and shivered as he dressed. He slipped on his shoes and grabbed his jacket, then walked to the bedroom door as silently as he could. Joe was huddled back down beneath the blanket, one arm curled around his head, his face buried in the pillow. All David could make out was his nose and one closed eyelid. He had always been skinny, but David thought he seemed even more spare now, all knobs and angles. How was that possible? The brisk shower had helped to clear David's head, and now all the belated thoughts that had been pushed to the side by the surprise and pleasure of seeing Joe again were starting to creep back in. What had he been doing these last two years, where had he been? He hadn't been home; David knew that for a fact. Joe's eye cracked open, and David startled guiltily. "What?" Joe croaked.  
"Nothing," David answered swiftly, embarrassed to have been caught staring. "I, uh. You should be able to get breakfast in the dining hall if you're hungry. Just tell them that you're my guest."  
"Whatever." Joe turned his face away, and David backed out of the room, grabbed his satchel, and left.  
He really should have skipped, for all the attention he gave to his lectures as the day went on. His mind kept tripping its way back to his room, to Joe, still sleeping maybe, or else prowling around David's suite, looking through his possessions, because David didn't doubt for a moment that Joe would snoop. Or what if he left? David didn't think that very likely, but then, he never would have imagined that Joe wouldn't return home to San Francisco, either. He'd hardly talked about anything else in Germany, had rattled on every day about his plans for the future, the house he was going to buy for his parents and then himself, the well-endowed woman of many virtues that he was going to snatch up. That talk had frittered away in Austria, but David had blamed that on the shadow of Landsberg that followed after them, and the distance that had grown up between them after that awful business with the commandant. They had avoided each other after that, and managed to not talk at all on the ship home.   
When it came to it, the men of Easy Company had a hard time pulling away from one another. They massed together on the dock, shaking hands and exchanging last minute insults and addresses, and nobody seemed willing to actually leave. David had turned away from his second goodbye to O'Keefe, and come face to face with Joe. They stared at each other for a moment, David half-expecting Joe to give him hell one final time, and then Joe's lip twitched, his shoulder jerking up in a half-shrug, and suddenly they were smiling. David opened his mouth to speak, but found there wasn't anything to say. What the fuck was he supposed to say? Joe, in unrepentant possession of the largest mouth in the company, didn't seem to have anything to say either. Instead he reached up, wrapping his hand around the back of David's neck. His hand squeezed, he gave David a short, hard shake, and then he let go and turned away. David looked around almost wildly for someone to speak to, something else to look at besides Joe's receding back. Fortunately Luz chose that moment to give them one final impression of Sink, and David was able to put all his uneasy feelings to the side, and had managed for the most part to keep them there ever since.  
But now Joe had turned up, like a treasured bad penny, and David moved through the day with the growing sense of a dreadful confrontation slouching towards them both. But that didn't stop him from hurrying back to his suite as quickly as he could after his final lecture. He could hear muffled strains of music as he came up the stairs, growing gradually clearer as he approached his door. When he opened it, it was to the swelling crescendo of strings, the crashing of cymbals, and to the sight of Joe stretched out on the rug, reading what appeared to be one of David's old term papers. David crossed the room and turned the volume down.  
"Hey, it was just getting to the good part." Joe didn't look up from the paper.  
"You're going to get me in trouble. I could hear it from the stairway."  
"What're they gonna do, knock you around? Make you run laps? No one's here, anyways. I checked."  
"What do you mean, you checked?" Joe shrugged a shoulder and smirked up at him through a lock of hair that had fallen down over his brow. "God, Joe, don't tell me you went into their rooms." Joe grinned, and David shook his head and fought against the ridiculous urge to smile back. "You have no propriety, you know that?"  
"Guess you forgot that you don't, either." David crossed back to the door to remove his shoes and coat. "Wanna know what I found?"  
"No," he answered firmly.  
"This place ain't so bad. I got talking with some of the guys in the kitchen, they let me help myself to whatever I wanted." Joe nodded towards David's desk, its normal contents shoved to the side to make room for a large plate of food lifted straight from the larder. David raised his brow in surprise: meals were supposed to be kept strictly within the dining hall. David had never tried to test the rule, but then, Joe had always somehow managed to do whatever he wanted, either through sheer terrier-like tenacity or his own brand of friendly charm. David's stomach lurched, reminding him that he had yet to eat that day, and he grabbed an apple and bit into it as he joined Joe on the floor.  
"Why are you reading that?" He asked, gesturing towards his paper.   
"Trying to figure out what the hell you're studying. I don't get it, you just take the whole thing apart. Takes all the fun out of it."  
"Purportedly it deepens your appreciation. But you're right. It sucks the life right out instead." David took another bite of the apple and glanced towards his typewriter and the sheaf of papers laying behind it: the sum whole of his own attempts at writing. If he did someday manage to tell a worthy story, one with weight and meaning, would another student sit in a similar room and pick it apart one word at a time as he had so many other works? The only thing he thought worth writing about was the war, and he hated what he'd written so far. The thought of it being read some day with the sole purpose of criticizing his syntax made him feel ill. Or maybe that was the apple on his empty stomach. He looked back over at Joe and found him watching him with a fathomless expression. David pulled a face and made a halfhearted attempt to take the paper from him. "Why did you have to choose this one? My professor hated it."  
"Think you answered your own question, Web," Joe said, yanking the paper away. Then he propped himself on his elbows and proceeded to read the scathing margin comments out loud, and David laid on his back beside him and tried to mount a defense. It was a wasted effort; he'd only needed a mediocre paper in order to pass the course, and so that was what he had written. But it was fun to argue with Joe.  
"Throw me a roll," he said to him, when he finally tossed David's paper to the side and climbed to his feet. Joe stuck a cookie in his mouth and lobbed the roll straight at his face. "Hey!"  
"Jesus, your reflexes are terrible," Joe said, grinning around the cookie. He went over to the record player and crouched down, flipping through the case. "You got some good stuff here, Web. I figured a guy like you would only listen to pop."  
"A guy like me?"  
"Yeah, you know."  
"I don't. And it's not my collection. Whoever had this suite before me left it behind."  
"Well that makes more sense. Oh, fuck, I love this one."  
"You're the surprising one," David said as he listened to the sound of bows sweeping across strings, the growing, blooming sound of an orchestra preparing to play. "I didn't know you liked this sort of music." Joe shrugged and threw himself down into the armchair.  
"My old man had a radio in his shop. He'd listen to whatever program, but he didn't ever miss a symphony broadcast."  
"A man of taste." David hesitated, then took a bite of his roll in an attempt at nonchalance that he didn't feel. "How is he? Enjoying his new house?"  
"Well, you know how it goes. Guys like my pop, they always do alright." A non-answer.  
"And your mother? Your sisters?" Joe had been staring off at nothing, but now he turned a sharply edged gaze down on David.  
"What're you doing?" He said softly, dangerously. David sat up, orienting himself so that he was facing Joe head on. _Brace for impact._  
"Did you get back in with your old cab company?" Joe stared flatly at him, then blinked once, twice, a stress tell that David had first noticed after Landsberg. David waited for a moment, then stood up, walking over to his desk. "Easy had a reunion last year. They had one the year before too, but I wasn't able to make it. But it was in Philadelphia this time, and the semester hadn't started yet, so I decided to go." He tapped a key on his typewriter, rolled the paper up, then back down. "Guarnere was there. He's the same as always; losing a leg hasn't slowed him down. He asked me if I knew where you were." He glanced back at Joe, but his face was turned away. On the record player the brass was guiding the rest of the orchestra with increasing sturm und drang, which suddenly fell away to soft strings. "I gathered that he tried to write you, and got a letter back from your parents that you hadn't come home. He wasn't the only one, either." He turned and leaned back against the desk, waiting until Joe finally looked back at him. His mouth, so given to wide laughs and curled sneers and snarls, was settled in a straight, unmoving line. "Where have you been, Joe?"  
Joe stood up. "I swear to God, you guys are no better than a bunch of gossiping old birds," he said mechanically. "You couldn't find anything else to talk about other than the one guy who didn't come to the party, huh?" He strolled across the room and crouched down by his pack.  
"What are you -"  
"I'm leaving."  
David scoffed, his chest squeezed. "You're running."  
"Fuck you!" Joe spun on him, back and shoulders straightening as he squared off. "What the fuck would you know about it? You skipped out on the worst of it, and when you were there you hid behind your goddamn civilian ideas and left the hard stuff to the rest of us."  
"If you're talking about-"  
"You know, Web, I'm fucking glad you weren't in Bastogne, I really am. You wouldn't be able to give me those dumb cow eyes if you had bothered to show up like the rest of the 101st. You wouldn't waste my time asking me where I've been."  
"Well, I wasn't there," David answered tightly, folding his arms across his chest. "So I don't know. So why don't you tell me?"  
"Jesus Christ." Joe half-lifted a hand towards his head, then dropped it. "I can't go back, okay? What the hell am I supposed to say to them? Tell my brother I was so close to cracking in Belgium that Winters had me running for him instead of watching the line? Tell my ma how I ordered all those people back in that cage? Or maybe I can tell my sisters about how much I enjoyed killing Krauts."  
"So you're just," David shrugged his shoulders, "Just never going back? How can you do that, how can you just not go home?"   
"I got news for you, Web, a lot of guys didn't get home."  
"Yes, but you're not dead!" Something shivered across Joe's expression then, and he looked away, his mouth pulling down in a jerking motion. "Is this some kind of, I don't know. Do you think you don't deserve to go home, or -"  
"Just shut up," Joe snarled. "Jesus, you spend a couple years surrounded by a bunch of miserable snobs, and all of a sudden you think you're fucking Freud."  
"You're being a coward," David said, coldly, widening his stance slightly in preparation for a violent reaction.  
"Oh that's rich, that just." Joe stuttered to a stop, and David felt an inward stab of satisfaction at managing to stump him, even if only temporarily. "Beautiful. Glad I came all the way out here to have fucking David goddamn Kenyon Webster tell me that I'm the coward."  
"I don't know why you came at all."  
"Bullshit."  
"What?" They had been flinging terse words back and forth with increasing speed, but David suddenly found himself stumbling, thrown off-balance by Joe's unexpected answer. The music was rising up again, increasing in urgency. Joe glared at him, his gaze heated, then rolled his eyes and looked away.  
"Forget it." He turned around, stomped back to his pack. "I'm outta here."  
"Joe, stop. Come on." David unfolded his arms, crossing the room to stand over him. Joe ignored him, pulling the straps closed with quick, practiced movements. There was a sinking feeling in David's chest, a rising feeling in his stomach. "Lieb." Joe stopped and looked up at him, sloe-eyed and piercing.   
"God," he huffed, rocking back on his haunches. "You don't know if you're going or coming, do you?"  
"I don't know what you mean."   
"Don't you?" He rolled to his feet, David stepped back to put some space between them but Joe followed after him. "How stupid can a guy get?" He reached up and tangled his hand in the collar of David's shirt, the knot of his tie. He yanked him forward, but no, that was a lie, because despite Joe's whipcord strength David was still the stronger one, and so he must have willingly fallen in against him so that their chests came together and Joe's breath was suddenly warm and sugar-laden on his face. Then Joe's nose was bumping against his cheek and Joe's lips were on his, insistent, and David could feel the scrape of teeth like the edge of a promise.  
This couldn't be happening. David made a fumbling grab for something, anything, and managed to get a hold of the fabric of Joe's shirt along his side. If it was going to happen at all, it should have happened three years ago, or four, somewhere between Holland and Austria. Everything had been so awful and beautiful by turns, everyone had been so madly happy and desperately afraid, over there it would have made a little sense. Not here, not in this ridiculous suite with symphonic music playing in the background. Had he ever thought of Joe like this, really thought about it, something with more intent than those flitting imaginings that came and went like something half-seen under moving water?   
"Web." David had been standing stiff and unresponsive, his mind a turning wheel. Joe's other hand came up and gripped David hard by his hair. He pressed his lips against the corner of David's mouth. "Where the hell are you?" There was something splintered in his voice, it gave David a sudden feeling like jumping, falling. And then he felt it, really felt it, like it seemed he hadn't felt anything for years; Joe pressed against him, hard and too-thin, clinging to him by his tie and his hair, his top lip full and roughly chapped and right _there_. David turned his head and kissed him, groaning with relief to a need he hadn't even known he'd been holding on to.   
Joe was as difficult in intimacy as he was in everything else. His mouth opened beneath David's, soft, damn it all, how had David not noticed before how perfectly kissable Joe's mouth was? But that was the only soft thing about him. He pulled demandingly on David's hair, pushed and shoved against him so that David didn't know if he wanted him to move back or forward or to the floor. So he held on to him by his shirt and ran a hand up his back and just focused on the crashing sensations, losing himself somewhere in the way Joe's fingernails scraped along his scalp, in the low breathy sound he made when David lowered his head and kissed his neck, that faint flowering scar.  
"Get the door," Joe said, and David pulled back enough to see that they had somehow made it to his bedroom door without him realizing it.  
"Oh," he said, his heart suddenly thundering for a completely different reason. He removed his hand from Joe's back and fumbled at the knob until it fell open. Joe yanked angrily at his tie.  
"How is this thing uglier than the last one?" He muttered, getting it loose and almost choking David as he jerked it over his head with one hand, his other hand dropping to David's waist to pull his shirt free of his pants. David followed his cue, lifting Joe's shirt up with a show of boldness that he didn't actually feel.  
"It's what's fashionable now, I told you," he answered breathlessly when Joe let go of him momentarily to shrug his shirt off.   
"You really give a shit about all that stuff?" He set his hands on either side of David's collar and yanked, ripping the buttons free with a series of soft pops.  
"What the fuck, Joe." He tried to feel angry, or even annoyed, but Joe's smug expression just made David want to kiss him again. So he pulled him closer with two hands on his waist and used his height to lean in over him until Joe had to tip his head back, and further back, and the way his eyes narrowed and darkened was too goddamn satisfying.   
"You know what you're doing, Web?"   
"Only just," he answered, lowering his head to brush their lips together, a shiver running through him at the feeling.  
"This'll be interesting then." Joe pushed hard against David's sternum, moving him backwards towards the bed.   
The truth was, David had only been with two other men before, and the first one had been a boy, really, a fumbling, awkward Taft encounter back before David had even heard the word 'paratrooper.' The second one had been with a graduate student after coming home, and it had been an incredibly brusque and impersonal exchange. David didn't know which annoyed him more, afterwards, the shameful sliding away of eyes of the first, or the knowing, self-satisfied smiles of the second. The cumulative disappointment of both experiences had been enough for him to resolve to stick to women in the future, but he supposed he could make an exception for Joe. He had been making exceptions for Joe for some time now.   
And really, it felt more like an acquiescence to something inevitable, or at least it did at the moment, as he fell back on the bed, Joe plastered against him, their arms and legs a tangle of half-removed clothing.   
"Alright, talk to me, bärchen," Joe said in that scraping voice of his, sitting up and rolling his hips down against David's. "What d'you like?"   
"Oh my God," David gasped mindlessly, because how the hell was he supposed to answer that? He didn't know, didn't even care at this point. Instead he propped himself up on an elbow and pulled Joe's mouth back down to him, kissing him hard, moaning when Joe nipped his lip. He ran his hand compulsively along Joe's ribs, his stomach, trying to tell him without words that he could do whatever the hell he wanted. Joe panted half a curse out against his mouth.  
"It's like that, huh?" He said, and David had never been more thankful for the difference of years and experience between them than he was in that moment, as Joe took him in hand and pushed him back against the mattress with a firm grip on the base of his throat.  
In the other room, the record played on in a dream-like fugue.

* * *

  
Later, long after the needle ran beyond the music and began scratching out a low complaint along the record's edge, they lay beside each other on David's too-small bed and shared a cigarette. David wondered idly if Joe would still lay so close to him if he had been in possession of a larger bed. There was no telling with Joe, but from the way he fidgeted endlessly, digging his elbow into David's side and shoving at his legs with his knee, David imagined not. But he liked it anyway, liked the way their shoulders crammed together, liked how he could feel the rise and fall of Joe's ribs against his own. He watched Joe as he smoked, his gaze turned upwards, looking oddly contemplative. Joe gave him a side-eyed glance, then looked back at the ceiling, the corner of his lip rising up.  
"Close your mouth, Web. You look like an idiot." When did Joe's insults start sounding like endearments? What the hell was wrong with him? David shifted, turning in towards him.  
"You know, I've never. Before this." If he was the sort to blush, he would surely be red now, which was ridiculous really, considering what they had just gotten up to together. Joe snorted.  
"Yeah, no shit."  
"Well, I just - "  
"Deep breaths, sweetheart, I'm not complaining. Obviously." Joe tipped his head back, rubbing his cheek and jaw against David's shoulder, and just as something beneath David's ribs started to warm and lift in response, he pulled away, sitting up and clambering over him to reach the edge of the bed. "I am fucking hungry though. You hungry?"  
"I don't want to move."   
"Finish this up," Joe said, handing him the last of the smoke. He strolled naked from the room, relaxed and shameless, and returned a moment later with the plate of food. "We got most of a sandwich here, some pickles, don't touch that cookie, that's mine. What the hell is this?" He held up a small jar.  
"Roe." Joe gave him a baffled look. "From a sturgeon. Caviar. You really did charm them, didn't you? I can't believe they gave you this."  
"Help yourself." Joe collapsed back against David's hip and stuffed half the remaining sandwich in his mouth. David opened the jar and spread the roe across a cracker, shaking his head disbelievingly. "What's with the look?"  
"It's nothing." He put the cracker in his mouth, chewed and swallowed. "I'm just eating caviar in bed with Joseph Liebgott, that's all." Joe grinned, all teeth.  
"Home run." He tossed the sandwich onto the platter and jammed his knee into David's stomach until he got the message and rolled to his back. Joe slithered over him, planting one hand beside his head and running the other up his chest, his fingers splayed out wide. "Wanna go another round?"  
"If I do, will you stop with the sports euphemisms?"  
"No," he answered, and pulled David's arms over his head as he straddled him. "You pitching or catching?"

* * *

  
Joe woke him early the next morning with an ungentle shake. "Web. Hey, wake up." David moaned and tried to shrug him off. It was still dark, but Joe had turned the light on in the main room and it was pouring rudely through the open doorway.  
"I'm still sleeping," he said blearily.  
"You were. Now you're waking up."  
"You're a sadist."  
"Uh-huh. Get up." He shook him again, and David batted him away. "David. I'm heading out."  
"What?" He rolled over, lifting himself up on one arm. "Why?" Joe shrugged, the light at his back casting his face in shadow.  
"C'mon, Web, you know how this goes."   
He didn't know. David opened his mouth to say just that, then closed it again. What would be the point? And honestly, he should have known. He had his semester to finish, and Joe couldn't stay here with him; he would have had to go sooner or later. But David had thought, it had occurred to him that maybe...but clearly not. "Well, um. I'll walk you out?" Joe nodded, and David got out of bed and pulled on a pair of pants. He trailed after Joe as he put on his boots and coat, crammed his hat down on his head. Joe was watching him with an unreadable expression.  
"Your mouth's hanging open again," he said.  
"It's just. Do you know where you're going? I'd like to keep in touch."  
"Yeah, I know where I'm going." Joe grabbed his pack and swung it over his shoulder, still watching him. "I'm going home."  
David stood and stared at him for a long moment, trying to track down something in his face to indicate whether or not he was telling the truth. But he had never been able to tell when Joe was lying to him. "Do you mean it?" He asked finally. Joe rolled his eyes. He walked over to the desk and pulled a piece of paper off the top of the stack. David drifted closer as Joe hunched over the desk, jotting something down with quick sure strokes. He tried to peer over his shoulder, and then Joe turned, shoving the paper against his chest.  
"Here. That's where I'm at in Frisco. Drop me a line whenever." David looked down at the scrawled address. Joe's handwriting was atrocious, the words running together.  
"You mean it?" He asked again, stupidly.  
"Jesus, Web." Joe went to the door, and David followed him, standing in the entrance as Joe turned around in the hallway. "Hey, uh." He sniffed, rubbed at his nose. "I meant it, you know. When I said I was glad you weren't in Bastogne."  
Honestly, it was probably the nicest thing Joe had ever said to him, this moment the closest the two of them would ever come to forgiveness for every poor thing they had done to each other. David didn't know what to say in response, didn't know whether or not he should touch him. "I'm glad you came to see me, Lieb."  
"Yeah." Joe looked at him, a smile starting in the corner of his mouth. "Take care of yourself, Web." Then he winked in that way of his, more a twitch of his eye than anything else, and started off down the hall. David watched him disappear down the stairs, then stepped back into his room and shut the door. He looked down at the sheet of paper he was still clutching against his chest as he walked slowly back to his desk. He knew it was a maudlin inclination, unforgivably sentimental, but he sat down anyways, pulling a clean sheet of paper from his drawer and picking up the pen from where Joe had dropped it.  
 _Dear Joe,_  
 _Greetings from drearily cold Massachusetts. It's four o'clock in the morning and you have just left, heading for a balmier coast and more temperate climes. If I wait a few days to send this letter, I estimate it will reach San Francisco shortly after you. So let me start with this: welcome home._  
What would Joe do, if and when he read his letter? Probably scoff and throw it in a drawer, or the bin. But maybe he would smirk, and roll his eyes, and read the whole thing. It was worth it, David decided, just for that chance. He continued writing.


	2. April, 1951 - New York, NY

Friday nights David usually went to the cinema, or to an off-Broadway show if he was able to snag a ticket. Sometimes he went out with a handful of other men from the paper; he had learned early on the importance of keeping good relations with his fellows. It was a cutthroat profession, and one that relied on bargains and strong alliances, even for a journalist of David's ilk, who wrote largely slice-of-life pieces. David didn't particularly enjoy it, but it had to be done, and so he did on occasion sacrifice his typical Friday routine in deference to needs must. But Saturday nights he invariably took Barbara out.   
It was a long established routine, an arrangement of nearly two years now. David didn't bother to call beforehand anymore, the way he had in the beginning, certain that a woman as stunning and warm-natured as Barbara would throw him over eventually. Instead he simply walked the handful of blocks to her apartment and waited outside the door until she slipped out to join him, lightly perfumed, made-up just enough to make it clear to David that she had put some effort in on his behalf. Not that she needed it; Barbara was a natural beauty. They would take in an art show now and then, or join a political rally if they could stand the crowd, but more often than not they went dancing. David was only passable, and Barbara wasn't the most clever woman on the floor, but they drank champagne and martinis and laughed and clutched each other as they swayed. Afterwards, they would find a late-night eatery and end the week abuzz with liquor and coffee.   
This night Barbara had directed their cab to an Italian restaurant where the proportions were considerable, and, in David's private opinion, the most impressive aspect of the entire operation. But Barbara loved it, and the coffee was fresh and rich, so he was pleased enough.   
"We'll have to get another cab back," Barbara said, looking through the glass pane with a frown. "It's sure to rain any moment now."  
"Come on, let's live a little dangerously," David said with a grin, leaning over to steal an astoundingly tasteless bite of pasta from her plate.   
"Let it be on your head," Barbara pronounced. "I'm not the one who caught cold this winter and walked around looking like death warmed over for nearly a month straight."  
"Oh-"  
"You know what you're problem is, David?"  
"I'm sure you'll tell me all about it."  
"I will, you can rely on it. Your problem is this." She reached across the table and tapped his chest. "This big, foolish, romantic heart of yours. What kind of person hopes to get caught out in the rain at the end of a lovely date?"  
He caught her hand in his. "Lovely, huh?"  
"Of course it was lovely, our dates are always lovely. That's not the point. Oh look, here it is now, coming down like anything. The point is, you need a little practicality in your life. That's where I come in." He liked Barbara best like this, just starting to wind down from excitement and stimulation, awash in good feeling and ribbing him with warm familiarity.  
"Should I be taking notes?" He asked, finishing off his coffee and nodding to the waiter as he dropped the check on their table.  
"No, darling, I'll keep it simple for you. You need a realistic woman, a straight-talker. Someone to keep you on the good and narrow."  
"Since I was falling apart at the seams before you came along," he said dryly as he pulled the necessary bills from his wallet.  
"Melodramatic, you see what I mean?"  
"The problem, Barbara, is that you're not practical." She recoiled in mock-offense, pulling away teasingly when he stood and reached for her hand.  
"How do you mean?"  
"After all, you did agree to walk home in the rain with me." He drew her up by her elbow, and she tutted and leaned against him.  
By the time they reached her apartment, David was feeling more than a little guilty over the whole affair. They had gotten soaked through, and the night was too chilly for it to be enjoyable. But Barbara was laughing, and when David wrapped an arm around her waist outside her door and she wound her arms around his neck and kissed him, it was easy to enjoy it, the warmth of her body beneath her cold clothes, heavy with rain, her gentle touch and known shape, well-mapped terrain by David at this point, from the countless dances where he held her close against him, and their occasional bouts of robust sex. When she pulled away, and smiled up at him with a fond expression, David felt something he was sure must be love stir in his chest.   
"Are you going to marry me, David?" She murmured.  
"I'm thinking about it," he answered, and she kissed him again.  
"Come inside and dry yourself off. I'll lend you my best umbrella. It's the least I can do for my some-day-fiance." He followed her inside and straight to her bathroom. Barbara handed him a towel and grabbed a separate one for herself, and David dried his hair and watched her undress with latent lust.  
"You'd have to do a better job of pretending to like my family, if we did get married," he said.  
"I do like your family. Anyway I like your mother. And John's not so bad."  
"Yes, but you'll have to put the right face on it for them."   
"What's wrong with my face?"  
"Your face is perfect. I mean, you'll have to show you like them in a way that they can understand. 'Prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.'"  
"Oh, he's quoting lines. Get out, you know I find you insufferable when you start quoting lines at me."  
He grinned and tossed the towel at her, and she caught it and wrapped it around her body. "'Time for you and time for me.'"  
"That one's a little better." She patted him playfully on the shoulder and shooed him out the door with a final kiss.  
He really should marry her, David thought to himself as he strolled home, shivering a bit in his still-wet clothes. He should have married her a year ago, he didn't know what he was waiting for. Barbara was intelligent and funny, passionate and kind, and for some reason she still preferred him over the hordes of men who would happily whisk her away at her slightest signal. She was aware, too, of his tepid interest in women, herself included, beautiful as she was, and she didn't seem to care aside from a few pointed comments about desiring to some day be a mother. David couldn't ask for a better woman to partner with, one that would make him laugh and pull him patiently back up when his mood was low. He should marry her, only the worst kind of idiot would pass on the chance to marry her.  
It would be a long, hard campaign to convince Barbara to give up her city though. Not that David didn't enjoy New York, but he also didn't relish the thought of spending his life surrounded by the steel towers that were rising up all across Manhattan. He preferred a more open view. An ocean view, if he was being honest, and he was aware of how spectacularly entitled it was of him to assume his right to such a staggering landscape, but he reminded himself often that a home along the ocean's edge didn't have to mean a life sentence in the Hamptons. And besides, he couldn't afford it, not unless he gave in to his father's unending insidious expectations.   
He still hadn't managed to fully divorce himself from familial proceedings, despite his perennial resolutions to do just that. His articles for the Journal were sufficient to keep him in modest comfort, but he did have his weaknesses. A quality overcoat of the softest wool fabric, in the most muted shade of blue-gray. The occasional pack of Parliaments. Endless fluted glasses of effervescently rising champagne for Barbara. He could do without, but some days it was a struggle to remind himself why he should.  
David stopped in surprise when he rounded the corner leading to his apartment and noticed the light pouring through the gap beneath his door. He distinctly recalled turning the lights out when he had left, because his landlady, despite her demure appearance, was in actuality an ancient terror who wouldn't hesitate to let him have it if she caught him wasting her electricity. He approached the door, set his head carefully against the wood, and listened intently.  
At first he didn't hear anything. Then, unmistakably, came the sound of movement against the worn wood floor, the clinking of glass. What was the bastard doing? David had next to nothing worth stealing, all his most prized possessions valueless to a thief. But the thought of someone touching them made him suddenly furious. He knew he should back away, leave the matter to the authorities, but no, the affront was too great to let stand for a moment longer. He hefted his umbrella and swung the door open.  
Joe barely looked up from where he was hunched over David's table. "Easy there, Web. White flag and whatever." He gestured to the open can of peaches in front of him, the half-drunk Ballantine. "You got anything else to eat around here?"  
_Oh, thank God_ , David almost said, or maybe _what the fuck is wrong with you_ , or _what took you so fucking long?_  
"I have some doughnuts in the breadbox," he said, still standing in the doorway with the umbrella half-raised.   
"Yeah?" The kitchen was narrow enough that Joe didn't bother to get up, bracing his knees against the bottom of the table and tipping the chair back instead, stretching his hand out to fumble the breadbox open. He glanced at David again, one brow lifting up. "You thinking about using that?"  
"Oh, definitely." But he closed the door and set the umbrella down in the corner. He only had the one chair, so he leaned back against the counter instead, directly behind Joe so that he would have to twist his head around to look at him. Joe didn't bite, turning his attention back to his hodgepodge meal, but that was alright too, as it meant that David could look him over freely. "How did you get in?"  
"Your landlady. I told her all about what swell buds we were, and how we saved each other's lives twice over in Europe, and she started purring for me."   
"So you lied."  
"Yeah." He slurped a peach into his mouth, then tipped his head back to smirk crookedly at him. David wanted to grab him by the throat and kiss him. God, three years. He folded his arms tightly around his ribs. "She couldn't believe that such a handsome, polite young man had jumped out of planes."  
"Somehow it didn't come up," David drawled, staring down at him. Joe would always be lean, but he looked worlds better than he had the last time David had seen him, more filled out, almost like he had been in Toccoa. Like the last eight years could be wiped away, and the two of them scarcely more than acquaintances again, two men who occasionally ran adjacent to each other up a mountain. He realized with a sudden violent shiver that they were staring appraisingly at one another, and then he remembered that his clothes were damp, his skin chilled. "I need to change into something else. Don't go anywhere."   
"Uh-huh," Joe said, still watching him as he brought the bottle to his lips. David stepped around him and down the abbreviated hallway that led to the only other room in his apartment. He could feel Joe's eyes on his back the whole way.  
Joe would show up now, of all times. Just when David had been starting to put it all behind him. Not the war of course, he doubted he would ever be able to put that very far behind. But he had finally started to grow used to that bruised feeling in his chest, to accept it for what it was and cease picking at it. And now here Joe was, and soon enough David would be bleeding again.   
He shrugged angrily out of his coat and hung it on the corner of the window frame over the radiator to dry. That was followed by his shirt and tie, his trousers and suspenders. His shoes and socks he laid out on the floor, and then he moved to his dresser, pulling out a fresh undershirt and a pair of flannel pants. He started to close the drawer, hesitated a moment, then reached down into its depths, rooting around until his fingers found the postcard's thick, still-glossy edge. David pulled it out, handling it carefully by its corners. 'San Francisco!' The card proclaimed in bold letters. The picture beneath it was of a cable car making its way up a steeply inclined street, surrounded by traffic on both sides. The note on the back was short, and scarcely legible. _Web - got your letter, thanks. You can picture me in that cab there on the left. Stay warm, change socks often - Liebgott_.   
David read the familiar words, then read them again. He flipped the card over and ran his thumb gently over the image of the cab. Then he groaned, and forced himself not to rip it in half in a fit of futile fury. He stuffed the postcard back in the drawer and pulled his clothes on.   
He hadn't kept track of the number of letters he had written to Joe over the past three years. It was mortifying, especially when held in contrast to the single postcard he'd received in return. Writing to Joe had become a sort of compulsion, something he did reflexively whenever he couldn't get the war off his mind, or simply whenever he missed him. Between those two states of being, the volume of letters he'd mailed to San Francisco seemed like a ringing indictment against his ability to cope.  
"You're looking good, Web." David glanced over to see Joe in the doorway, his eyes flicking over him. He looked away, gesturing towards the record player. "Didn't feel like leaving it behind for the next guy?"  
"You know, I hardly noticed it before you visited. But I got attached to it that last semester." David was fully aware of how much he was revealing, but at this point it was just one more in a long line of admissions he had made to Joe. "A better person would have left it."   
"Fuck 'em," Joe said with a roll of his shoulders. Then he stepped into the room, closing the distance between them. It was astounding, the amount of space that the movement of one person could take up in another's awareness. The setting was extraneous, the thoughts that had been crowding David's mind moments earlier sucked away, straight into his stomach and groin. There was just Joe, walking up to him and settling both hands on David's hips like they belonged there, his thumbs digging in against the bone. He shot David a final, challenging look, then leaned in and scraped sharp teeth down along his neck, moving back up with a sweep of his tongue. David shuddered and latched on to his arm. "What d'you say, Web?" Joe breathed into his ear.  
"You're a bastard," David said. Joe's only response was to huff a warm breath against his cheek and bite down on his earlobe. "I'm seeing someone."  
Joe froze, his hands tightening painfully. Then he pulled back, just enough to look David in the face. His eyes were narrowed; he looked for all the world as if he was about to take a swing at him. "Who?" He demanded, as if he had a right.  
"Her name's Barbara. I've been seeing her for a few years now - " He broke off when Joe barked a surprised laugh.  
"Oh, her. Fuck. Yeah, you've mentioned her a couple of times." He smirked and ran his hands up under David's shirt, along his stomach. "I don't give a fuck about that. Thought you meant a guy."  
"You." Something large and jagged suddenly swelled up in his throat. "You read my letters?"  
"Of course I," Joe said, and then stopped, pinning David with a piercing look. "Yeah," he said more slowly. "I read them. They were so goddamn annoying, it was just like talking to you."  
"You never wrote back."  
"What am I gonna say? I'm no good at that kind of shit."  
"What, words?" David said bitingly, his whole body wanting to shake with anger and relief. He touched the scar on Joe's neck. "I guess I've forgotten the details. Isn't this the result of you not being able to shut the hell up?"  
"Watch it," Joe said, getting a grip on him by his shirt, hooking his leg behind his knee so that David half-collapsed back onto the bed. Joe planted the flat of his palm against David's face and shoved him backwards, and suddenly all David could do was laugh, and pull Joe down after him, rolling him over so that he could settle in against him and kiss him. Joe let loose a thrilling moan that vibrated against David's mouth and nearly drove him crazy, and he had to pull away and bury his face against Joe's neck instead. "So," Joe rasped, slipping his way past the band of David's pants and wrapping a hand around him. "No one else?"  
"What?" David said, barely capable of coherent thought. He kissed feverishly along the length of Joe's throat, like he could maybe hunt down the source of that sweet scratch in his voice.  
"No other guy?" Joe squeezed, and David groaned and rocked against his hand.  
"You're still on that? No. No, I. I mean, there was one guy, one time, but it was nothing."  
"Nothing, huh?" Joe said tightly. David pulled back.  
"Are you jealous?" He asked incredulously.  
"Yeah, right," Joe said, knee-jerk.  
"Because it's been three years, you know. You didn't ask me to not -"  
"Jesus, I'm not jealous, alright? Fuck who you want, fuck all of New York, just stop talking and put that goddamn mouth of yours where it belongs."  
"You are impossible." But he sat up and undid Joe's pants. Further up on the bed, Joe struggled onto an elbow and fought furiously with his own limbs to jerk his shirt off. "What about you?" David asked as he pulled Joe's pants and underwear down. "Anyone else?"  
"Who has the fucking time?" Joe gasped.  
"But isn't San Francisco - "  
"They crack down on that shit like clockwork. I can't afford to get caught up in that."  
"What about a girl?"  
"Yeah, I've got a girl."  
David didn't like that. If he was being honest, it made his blood boil. He knew it was ridiculous, knew that he and Joe didn't have what anyone would bother to call a relationship. They didn't have anything at all. But he also couldn't understand the distinction Joe seemed to be making of the fact that they had steady partnerships with women rather than men. If David were with another man instead of Barbara, he would still have written those letters to Joe, he would still feel the three thousand miles between them.  
"I swear to God, David, if you don't get moving - " David leaned down and planted his open mouth along the inward slope of Joe's hip.  
"I missed you," he said, not looking up or moving away. "Isn't that insane?"  
"Just shut up." Joe grabbed him by his hair and yanked. David glanced up at him, then let Joe move him how he liked. "Jesus Christ," Joe grated out, his hips snapping up. "Ah, fuck, David, David."

* * *

  
"First thing tomorrow, you're going to the nearest grocer and getting us some damn food." Joe was sprawled out on his stomach, his arms framing his head, and David couldn't look away from him. The apartment was dark except for the lone bedside lamp. Anything would be lovely under that soft light; David knew that the moment's warm glow was a simple combination of fatigue, lighting, and post-coital bonelessness. But Joe was still like something out of a tactile, dragging dream.  
"We could go right now if you want."  
"Do you even use your kitchen?" Joe went on, ignoring him. "There's seriously nothing in it."  
"I don't know how to cook. I usually go out to eat."  
"Jesus, what a waste of money." Joe lifted his head to glare at him. "Do you realize how much money you're wasting?"  
"No, tell me."  
"Fuck." He dropped his head back down. "A lot, that's how much."  
"How's your family?" He ran his hand along Joe's shoulder, and Joe twitched and shrugged him off.  
"Good. They're good." He rolled to his side and propped himself up on an elbow. "My old man had to move his shop, but business is steady enough that I have to help him out now and then. Ma's got her hands full trying to get my last two sisters married off." He tipped his head back against his shoulder. "Jake's married, Gertie's married. I've got too many nieces and nephews to bother counting."  
David wanted to ask him how it had been coming home, but Joe had a look in his eye like he knew what he was thinking and would make him regret it. So instead he leaned in and rubbed his stubble along his collarbone. "It must be nice, having a big family."  
"Cut that out," Joe said, shoving him away. "Yeah, it's nice. It's what it was all about, you know?" David smiled at him, and Joe rolled his eyes and looked away. "I'm sleeping," he announced, and settled down on his side. David twisted away to click off the lamp, then turned back and tried to wrap an arm around Joe's waist, set his head next to him on the pillow. "What the hell are you doing?" Joe said irritably. "Like this, you idiot," and he pushed David roughly until he turned the other way, and Joe pressed himself against his back and threw an arm over his ribs. His nose was was budged up against the nape of David's neck, David's hair rising up in response to the soft puff of his breath. It was rhythmic, and surprisingly soothing. David closed his eyes and slept.  
It was nearly noon by the time he woke, sunlight filtering in weak diffusion through windows facing against a brick wall. Joe was still sleeping in a huddle in the middle of the mattress; David had been pushed to the edge sometime over the course of the night. He climbed out of the bed with careful movements, then stood and looked down at him. More than eight years since they first met each other, a war that spanned Europe, and terrible deeds witnessed and performed that spanned an even greater distance, and Joe didn't seem to have aged at all. David wondered if the same could be said for him. He turned away, grabbing his shoes and clothing and slipping from the room. He dressed in the kitchen, then scribbled a quick note to Joe and left the apartment.  
His first stop was the corner grocery, where he bought what basic supplies he imagined a standard kitchen contained. Then he stepped into the neighboring bakery and stood and stared at the glass cases while the man behind the counter took orders from the patrons behind him, having immediately discerned that David had no idea what he wanted. All he knew for certain was that Joe had an endless sweet tooth, but what from this overwhelming array would please him best? He eventually gave up and got one of each. He walked out a few moments later with far more pastries than two men could sensibly consume, and made his way back to the apartment.  
Joe was standing in front of the stove, smoking and rubbing his face with the blank expression of the newly woken. "You got that?" He asked, when he took in the bags and over-sized pastry box David was juggling, making no move to actually help.  
"I'm fine. Here, this is for you." David stopped beside him, indicating the box with his chin. Joe raised a brow and lifted the lid to peer inside. He grinned.  
"Whoa. You leave anything for the rest of the neighborhood?" He snatched the box, and David set the bags on the counter beside him, fighting off a sheepish smile.   
"Oh, just some scraps. I didn't know what you liked."   
"This is such a waste," Joe said, but he dug gleefully through the box, and worked his way through three pastries in the time it took David to put the groceries away. Copious amounts of sugar and butter clearly loosened him in a way even sex couldn't achieve, because when David came and stood beside him by the stove, Joe threw an arm around his shoulder and bumped their heads together, then playfully tried to wrestle him off his feet.  
"Stop it!" David said, torn between amusement and annoyance. He wrapped an arm around Joe's waist to try and pull him off balance in return, but Joe slipped away, elbowing him hard in the ribs as he went.  
"Just give it up." He half-jumped on David's back and managed to get him in a sloppy headlock, laughing out loud when David lost his footing and went down. They were too old, David knew, to be tussling like boys on the kitchen floor, especially a kitchen as cramped and narrow as this one. But it was an excuse to get his hands on Joe again, so he would suffer the indignity. They were panting and breathless by the time Joe succeeded in pinning David on his stomach, and once it was clear he had won he flipped him back around and kissed him triumphantly, then peeled him roughly out of his clothes. He kept coming back to David for hard, biting kisses as they fucked on the floor, and the pastries had left his mouth meltingly sweet.  
"This place is boring," he said later, watching David shave in the mirror. The bathroom was so small that Joe was forced to stand in the hallway, but that didn't stop him from peering over David's shoulder, watching him with a skeptic's eye, as if sure David would mess the job up somehow.  
"New York?"  
"No, idiot. Your apartment." He made an effusive gesture with his arm. "It barely looks like a person lives here. Your place at Harvard was the same way, I just figured it was 'cause it was student housing. But you're the boring one. I should've known."  
David shrugged as infinitesimally as possible, lifting his chin to scrape the razor along the edge of his jaw. "I don't see what's wrong with it. It's clean. It's spacious enough for one."  
"Yeah, it's a great place to sleep until you're dead," Joe said with a sneer. "Look at these walls."   
"White's a pretty common wall color, Lieb."  
"You should paint them."  
"Huh." David lowered the razor and pretended to consider it. "No, I think I'll pass."  
"Aren't all you rich assholes obsessed with rugs, and art and shit?" David huffed in irritation and glared at him in the mirror.  
"No, and fuck you." He turned the faucet on and started cleaning up. "I don't like a lot of clutter. And besides, I'm not planning on staying here forever. There's no point in trying to personalize it."  
"Yeah, but you live here now. Might as well enjoy it." David looked up long enough to shoot him an incredulous look. "Hey, I'll paint it for you."  
"What? Why?"  
"Why the hell not? Any color is better than this." He jabbed a finger against the wall. "Some fucking ugly shade might make it more fun. Remember that piss they tried to pass off as beer in France?"   
"Please don't talk about that."  
"That'd be a good color for this place."  
"Piss yellow? Thank you, no."  
"Well what color do you want, then?"  
"What has gotten into you?" David set his razor down and turned around to face him. Joe looked away with a vaguely shifty expression.  
"What, a guy can't do something nice without getting the third degree? I'm trying to do something fucking nice here, Web." David stared at him, watched him scowl at the wall and rub self-consciously at the scar on his neck.  
"Maybe gray?" He said finally, doubtfully.  
"Gray? You kidding me? Jesus." Joe shook his head, his unsettled expression falling away, an exasperated one growing up in its place. "Any fucking color in the world, and the guy wants gray. You know what, forget it. I'm picking the color, I let you do it and you'll have this place looking like a damn army barracks." He grabbed David by his belt loops, pulling him out of the bathroom. "Get dressed. I don't know where to buy paint around here." David let Joe drag him into the kitchen, let him harry him back into his shirt and shoes, strewn carelessly across the floor, and then let him lead him out of the house and down the sidewalk. At the hardware store, he trailed bemusedly behind Joe as he paced along the aisles grabbing supplies, then stood stiffly beside him as he flipped through a paint catalog and prattled on with the woman behind the counter. Joe ignored him completely, until the woman disappeared and came back with a can; then he turned to David and gestured impatiently. "Well, pay the lady, Web."  
"Oh. Sorry." He smiled at the woman while he counted out the bills and handed them to her, then glared at Joe when she turned her attention to the cash register. Joe gave him an exaggerated wink.  
"Hey, thanks," he said to the woman when she handed him, not David, the change. "Appreciate it." He grabbed the can of paint and motioned to David to take the rest, and David followed him out of the shop, still hopelessly confused.  
His confusion only grew over the course of the day, and then the following day, as Joe made himself at home in his apartment, then proceeded to destroy it, pulling furniture away from walls and leaving discarded clothing and used dishes wherever he dropped them and playing records too loud while he painted. David tried to focus on other things, but mostly found himself following after him, watching.  
"Not to put too fine a point on it," he said as he sat at the kitchen table, his current article half-completed and forgotten on the typewriter. "But you do realize that you're painting the walls gray?"  
"What are you, color blind?" Joe said, standing on a chair as he ran his brush over and around the doorway with smooth, even strokes. "It's green." He frowned and ran a considering finger along his lip. "Or blue. Anyway, it's not gray."  
"Whatever you say, liebling," David answered, turning back to his article.   
"What the fuck did you just call me?" There was a thread of amusement winding through his voice, but mostly he sounded confrontational.  
"What are you, deaf?" David quipped, struggling to keep his back and shoulders relaxed. Honestly, it had just slipped out, but he wasn't retreating.  
There was a long silence, and then the sound of Joe's feet hitting the floor, the clatter of the brush being dropped onto the upturned lid. Then Joe's hands were on his neck, under his jaw, and his head was being tipped backwards. Joe was looking down at him with an unreadable expression. "Don't get sweet on me now, Web," he said, and it should have been teasing, or at least dismissive, but instead it was serious, the most somber thing Joe had ever said to him.  
_Why not?_ David wanted to ask. _What's the point in pretending?_ But instead he pulled Joe into his lap and kissed him with all the pent up frustration he could convey, and Joe's hands on his arm and shoulder were rough too, his voice angry when he cursed and pushed in closer.  
The next day they went together to a ball game. It was the first one of the season, and Joe was chomping at the bit about it, and bored David nearly to sleep on their way to the park rattling off statistics and his own endless opinions on the teams and their players. In whole, David didn't care much for sports unless he was playing them, so he was surprised to find he enjoyed the experience. It was more than just Joe's presence at his side, drinking a pop and leaning forward towards the field, as if he could will his preferred outcome into existence by yelling about it. Besides, he was largely ignoring David, having struck up a conversation with a group of fellow spectators sitting nearby. No, it was something to do with the feeling in the air, the buzz of excitement, the endless current of traveling chatter from the watching crowd. David looked up at the sky, clear and unbelievably blue. Then he looked around, at the man in a second-hand suit explaining the mechanics of the game to his two young children in a broadly rolling Spanish accent, to the elderly couple bundled excessively up against the cool air, watching the unfolding game with a weighted gravitas more appropriate for a courtroom proceeding, to the youth hawking wares in a voice that carried boldly across the seats until it cracked and dropped away unexpectedly. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out his notebook and pencil.  
"What're you doing?" Joe asked, when he noticed David writing against his knee.  
"Taking notes. I think I might pitch this to my editor for my next article."  
"What, baseball?"  
"Yes. Or rather, the people who take in the games."  
"Everyone goes to games, Web."  
"That's precisely it. It's a microcosm of the city itself. And just think, these games are happening all across the country, and each one is a snapshot of regional life. It could make for an interesting piece. I wonder if I should interview some of these people."  
"Jesus. Web, I swear to God, anyone who heard what you just said is thinking about punching you right now. And nobody wants to answer a bunch of questions about why they come to a fucking baseball game during the goddamn game."  
"This might amaze you, Liebgott, but people usually enjoy talking to me." It was a simple fact that David was skilled at conducting interviews. It was mostly due to the nature of the articles he wrote: stories centered around locations or city events and the people involved in them. All he really did was invite them to talk about themselves, and try to keep them from wandering too far from the relevant subject matter. There was nothing to it.  
"Yeah, I bet. You flash 'em the eyes and the smile, and do that thing where you act all laid-back and friendly, and by the time they realize what an incredible asshole you are the interview's over."  
"It's not an act," David said defensively. "I like people."  
"Sure. Like a bird likes the view."  
"Oh, fuck off." Joe laughed and turned his attention back to the game, and David resumed writing with a feeling like fingers pulling in different directions across his body, towards mirth and irritation, towards some lightly prickling spot, blood flowing back to a numbed limb.   
David went the next day to make obeisance to his editor, promising him a finished article in a week and trying to convince him of the merits of his latest idea. He ended up following Farrow around the bullpen, nearly shouting to be heard over the clatter of typewriters and the coarse chatter of men. Farrow made a show of acting as if he could care less if David turned anything in at all, but in the end he green-lighted the baseball piece and told David to move his ass on his current project. Joe had been painting when David left, but his return found him sitting on his bed, reading through a stack of papers, which David recognized with an inward cringe. Joe looked up as he came down the hallway, wearing another one of those fathomless expressions. "The fuck is this, David?" He didn't sound angry, only tired, which was worlds worse. David sat beside him on the bed, wondering privately when he first started to be taken in by all of Joe's small physical quirks. His curled shoulders when he sat, belying a man of far less grit and fire. The way he swept his hair back from his face with fingers so consistently placed that David could see the channels their motion had made across his head. The way his eyes and mouth twitched when he was distressed. David reached out and took the papers from him.  
"Don't worry about this. This is just my personal example of human hubris." Joe stared hard at him, then back down at the papers. "I'm not planning on publishing it. I abandoned the idea years ago."   
"You wrote about a lot of stuff in there."  
"Well, I had big ambitions for it. I was going to tell the whole damn world what it had really been like. I was going to force them to watch that light turn green, and jump. The way we had to." He shrugged. "But I can't tell that story. It felt like I was always writing too close to it, or too far removed. And it." He looked down, squeezing his hands tightly on the stack of papers, then forcing himself to let go, set it down. "It hurt. I had to stop."  
"Yeah. Best thing is to just forget it," Joe said, sounding more like himself. He leaned back against the headboard, hooking his foot around David's knee to invite him more fully onto the bed. "Like everyone else has."  
"Easy hasn't. They have reunions every year, you know. They still have no idea what happened to you."   
"You kept your mouth shut about it?"  
"Yes, although I don't know why. You have paint on your nose." David reached a hand over and thumbed along the gray streak, and Joe shrugged him off. "I don't understand you. It's nice, seeing everybody."  
"What's the point in rehashing it all?" Joe said dismissively. "I get letters now and then, but I don't want." He stopped, started again. "They can do their thing, and I'll do mine." David thought he should probably argue the point some more; it was what they usually did after all, argue and pick at poorly healed points until old wounds reopened, so they could sink angrily into each other, work some of the red out. But the stack of papers sitting on the bed between them stopped him. He set them on the floor, then put his hands on Joe's thighs and dragged him down the bed towards him. Joe went along with it, pulling David on top of him. "You made me sound like a real jerk in that story of yours."  
"Lieb. You are a jerk."  
"Fuck you, Web," Joe said, finally smiling again.  
"How long are you staying?" David asked the following day. He had meant to ask from the very first, but Joe was a walking distraction, and David had been afraid of what the answer might be.  
"Got a ticket back for Saturday night." Joe was painting the final wall of David's apartment, the one that his bed was kept against, so they had pulled the frame into the center of the room. David was laying stretched out across it, playing at reading a book while he watched Joe work.  
"That's in two days."  
"No shit? I had no fucking idea."  
"Alright, fuck you. When were you planning on filling me in?"  
"I don't know." Joe finally deigned to sound a little guilty. "Never seemed like a good moment."  
"Is now a good moment for you to tell me why you came to visit in the first place?"  
"Figured you missed me," Joe said, grinning over his shoulder at him, sidestepping the question. "And I was right, wasn't I?"  
"Don't be coy, Joe. It doesn't suit you."  
"What the fuck have you got to complain about?" Joe said, starting to sound annoyed. "Aren't I painting these goddamn walls for you?"  
David gave a startled, mirthless laugh. "That has nothing to do with me. Why are you -"  
"How 'bout I count how many times you've gotten off in the past couple of days, huh?" Joe threw the brush down; it landed in the can of paint and slopped gray liquid onto the floor. "Let's me fucking think here, it was twice that first night, because you came almost immediately the first time. And then the next morning was three, and you made that same stupid face you always do when I -" David swung off the bed, stomped towards the door. "What, baby, you don't like hearing about it?" Joe said, hard and victorious. David slammed the door behind him.   
He paced back and forth in the kitchen, struggling to master himself. When his jaw loosened and he was able to take a deep, slow breath, he stood still and braced his head against the cabinet, closed his eyes and told himself to stop being a fool. He'd done precisely what Joe wanted: he'd gotten angry and stormed out and failed to get any real answers. Some goddamn journalist he was. He knocked his head lightly against the wood, then forced himself to straighten, open his eyes. Then he picked up the phone and called Barbara.   
"Well this is a surprise," she said after she answered and they exchanged greetings. "Is something wrong?"  
David wanted to laugh, or pull at his hair. Of course Barbara would reach close to the heart of it without even meaning to. "No, nothing's wrong. But I'm afraid I have to cancel our Saturday."  
"You've gotten sick, haven't you? Your voice is strange, didn't I say that you'd end up sick?"  
"I'm not sick, and if I was you might try sounding a little less pleased about it." Barbara laughed warmly, and David felt some of his anger lift away from him. "No, an old friend of mine is in town, and Saturday is his last night."  
"From Harvard?"  
"The Airborne, actually." A sound from behind made him turn, just in time to see Joe come up the hallway looking, if not contrite, then perhaps wearily rueful.   
"Oh? How nice." There was a careful pause. "Is it nice, darling? Are they alright?" David turned away from Joe, hunching in slightly around the phone and Barbara's concerned voice.  
"Yes, it's." He tried to inject a little levity into his voice. "It's perfectly nice." Joe snorted behind him.  
"Maybe I can come around to yours tomorrow and meet him. Have you mentioned him to me before?"  
"A few times, yes," David said, glaring at Joe and motioning with his hand for him to go away. Joe lifted a brow and didn't move. David gave up, focused on keeping the wince from his face as he said, "Joe Liebgott? I told you about the time he visited me at Harvard?"  
"Oh!" Barbara said, at the same time that the smirk slipped from Joe's face and his eyes narrowed. "Well," she said slowly, an odd tone entering her voice. "No wonder you sound so strange."  
"Yes, um. Well, I hadn't expected -"  
"That settles it then," she said brightly, talking over his fumbling attempts to excuse himself on a party line for having sexual relations with a man. "I'm coming by tomorrow, and the three of us are going out. I'm dying to meet him."  
"Barbara, I don't know that -"  
"You needn't worry about me causing trouble, darling, I'll be so well-behaved. You know I don't care about any of it, don't you?" David closed his eyes, expelling a heavy breath.   
"Yes, I know. You're better than an angel."  
"I should hope so. They follow just any old sort about."  
"You're a seraph."  
"I'll see you tomorrow. We'll have such fun!" And with that she hung up. David followed suit, then looked guiltily back at Joe.  
"What does she know?" Joe asked in a low angry scrape. David didn't think he'd ever been closer to being hit in the face.   
"I didn't tell her anything," he said defensively. "But. Well, not much gets past her." He folded his arms across his chest and lifted his chin. "You'll see soon enough. We're going out with her tomorrow night."  
"Jesus, David." Joe paced up to him, and David braced himself for whatever might come next, but Joe just reached around him, snatching up his pack and dropping down into the chair. David watched him light a cigarette, watched him lean against his elbow and puff his lips slightly in order to blow out an amorphous circle of smoke. "You should get that paint off your floor before it dries," Joe said, not looking at him.  
"You," David said, half-strangled with frustration. "You are so damned." His mouth opened and closed as he struggled to think of a term forceful and poisonous enough to do his feelings justice, but in the end he just pulled a rag from below the sink and went to clean up the mess Joe had left him.  
They spent that night and the majority of the next day hardly speaking, hardly acknowledging each other's presence. David had worried that Joe would flat out refuse to come out with Barbara, but Friday night found him climbing into the cab after David, his hair slicked back and his face freshly shaven. David pressed his back against the seat of the cab as Joe leaned around him to stare assessingly at Barbara. She stared back with frank curiosity, her lips settled into a straight, neutral line. But it didn't take long for them to start curving slowly up, or for her expression to warm and deepen. Joe gave a low whistle.  
"Yeah, you're in trouble, Web. She's outta your league." He leaned in against David's shoulder so he could stick his arm across his body, offering it to Barbara. "Joe. Good to meet you."  
"Barbara," she said, seeming more to hold his hand than shake it. "And I promise you, he knows. I tell him so all the time. What sort of music do you like, Joe?"  
"Anything, so long as they aren't crooning."  
"I know just the place," she said, turning to address the cab driver.  
It was an awful night, although David was the only one who seemed to think so. He sat stiffly between his two, well, _lovers_ , he supposed, all the way to the nightclub Barbara had chosen for them. Joe and Barbara talked around him as if he weren't there, and Barbara apparently found Joe endlessly amusing, and Joe scarcely spared him a glance. At the club, David sat on one end of their little round table and tried to take in the music, while Joe and Barbara sat at the other end and laughed into their drinks, leaning in close to shout back and forth to one another.   
"Get us another round, darling, would you?" Barbara said, throwing him a glowing smile.   
"The same?" David asked, lifting a hand to catch the attention of one of the circling waiters.  
"You know, I think I'll have some too," Joe said, gesturing to Barbara's empty champagne glass. "Last time I had any was Berchtesgaden. You remember that, Web?" He went on without waiting on a reply from David. "Why not, right? He's paying."  
"Not tonight," Barbara said. "Tonight's my treat. But drink up, do."  
"You always let the lady buy your drinks?" Joe asked, finally looking at David. He looked appealing in the dim light in a way that David had never seen from him before, and for a moment he was struck by all the versions of Joe that seemed to exist simultaneously in his mind, and by the realization that there were exponentially more versions of this same fascinating, frustrating creature that he had known and not known for close to a decade. The waiter appeared at his elbow, making him jump a bit in his seat.   
"Three more for the table," he said, lifting his empty glass.  
"Oh, no, David always picks up our tab, he's quite chivalrous," Barbara said to Joe. "He'd run himself into debt to please me if I let him. Impractical, you know."  
"You're telling me," Joe said, shooting David a smug glance, smiling from the corner of his mouth.   
It went on like that for the remainder of the night, the two of them talking to each other as if they were the only ones in the room, and, even more painfully, talking almost exclusively about David. By the time they spilled back into a cab, David was certain he would rather be shot again than spend another moment with Barbara and Joe together.  
"Walk me up?" Barbara said to him when the cab pulled to a stop outside her apartment.  
"Of course," he said. Joe tipped his head around him to grin at her.  
"Web's a real lucky guy," he said, his voice an even more pronounced rasp than usual, proof in David's opinion that he'd been talking entirely too much tonight.   
"He is," Barbara agreed. She reached out and took Joe's hand. "It was an absolute pleasure to meet you."  
"Yeah. Same."  
"Come on, darling." David climbed out of the cab after her, walked beside her up the steps towards her building. "He's certainly not what I expected," Barbara said, once they were well away.  
"What do you mean?"  
"Oh, I don't know. When you told me that he was older than you, and then some of the little things you told me about him during the war, I expected." She stopped at her door, making a wry face as she turned to face him. "I'm not sure. A different sort of person." She looked towards the cab, then laid her hand on his arm. "But I'm glad that I was wrong." David stared down at her, mystified. Barbara lifted her hand from his arm, shifting it over to his chest. "But you will be careful with this foolish heart of yours, won't you?"  
David couldn't help the short, grim laugh he gave as a response. He could see that it surprised Barbara; cynicism hadn't existed between them before this moment. "You don't need to worry about that," he said coolly. Barbara stared up at him for a long, silent breath.  
"David," she said, her fingers tensing on his chest. "Be careful."   
Back home, David wasn't sure who moved first, who first latched on to the other. It seemed one moment he was unlocking his door, Joe too close behind him, and in the next they were inside the apartment and he had Joe by both shoulders, had pushed him back against the door hard enough to make the hinges rattle, to set the chain swinging. Joe wasn't so much groaning as he was growling, as he gripped David hard by his hair with both hands and forced his head down to an acutely uncomfortable angle so that he could kiss him unsparingly. He rocked his hips against David, and David hissed in response and shoved him against the door again.  
Hearts didn't come anywhere near it, he tried to assure himself as Joe pushed him backwards through the kitchen. When need for another person hurtled straight past warmth, plunging directly into this consuming, hungry heat, when a gentle touch was impossible, untenable, but sinking teeth and fingers that bruised turned the mind feverish, that couldn't have anything to do with the heart. Joe grabbed him by his chin, his fingers almost seeming to shake as he traced along his jaw, and this time when he pressed against him and brought their mouths together it was with an undeniably soft moan. David let his mind go black. Joe was right. If it couldn't be squared away, better to not think of it at all.   
David woke up late the next day. He laid in bed for a long moment, staring at his freshly painted wall, then rolled over to check the time, to confirm that they only had a handful of hours left. He was alone in the room; he got out of bed and went to the bathroom, using the head and splashing cold water on his face. Joe was in the kitchen, smoking as he read the nearly completed article sitting on David's typewriter. "Want one?" He asked, offering David his own pack of Parliaments.  
"Why not?" David came to stand beside him, leaning down so Joe could light his cigarette. He closed his eyes on his first inhale, relishing the moment. He'd been trying to quit for years, but doubted he'd ever manage to give the habit up completely. He lacked the necessary willpower. He opened his eyes and looked down at Joe, who had been watching him with a strange intentness from the moment he walked into the room.  
"I'm getting married, Web," he said, in that voice that David loved.  
"What?" David said, although honestly he didn't know that he was actually surprised. He'd known that there had been something, had to be some reason for Joe to come see him. But no, this hard, clenching pain in his stomach, this sudden nauseous feeling, no, he hadn't seen this coming. He opened his mouth, closed it, tried again. "When?"  
"In a couple of weeks. She, uh. I don't know, I guess there's something about getting married in May."  
There was a cold, unfeeling creature growing up inside him, clicking into place along his spine. David was familiar with it, had let it protect him before in similar situations, moments when he must either shake apart or encase himself in ice. He focused on his cigarette, willed the tremor from his fingers. "So that's why." He knew Joe was watching him with those fucking eyes of his, that gaze that could mean anything. "And this was, what? Part of Joseph Liebgott's prenuptial fuck down memory lane? Are you revisiting your greatest plays? I'm flattered, I must have been fairly memorable to warrant a trip across the country."  
"Yeah, you're fucking memorable, alright," Joe said, stubbing out his cigarette with a jerking motion, because if there was one thing Joe could be relied upon for, it was his quick temper and big mouth. "Who wouldn't remember the most obnoxious person they've ever known? You know," and he rolled suddenly to his feet, the chair scraping across the floor as he shoved it back. "You know, I could pick up a piece of ass anywhere in Frisco if that was what I wanted, and they wouldn't talk half as much as you, and they wouldn't constantly look at me like - Jesus, fuck." He broke off, his teeth coming together in a biting grimace.   
"You should have stayed there, then," David said coldly. "Fucked your boys in San Francisco and left me the hell out of it."  
"I don't have any goddamn boys in San Francisco, I told you," Joe said, as if that somehow fucking mattered, David didn't understand why Joe seemed to think that it mattered.  
"You must not be as good as you like to think you are, Joe," he drawled. "If it was easier for you to come all this way for a sure thing rather than have to go out and try to find someone new -"  
"You're so fucking stupid, Jesus Christ, quit acting like this is some kind of - "  
"Some kind of what?" David gave up on his cigarette, flicking it into the tray. "Some tawdry affair where we use each other for the convenience of it, and then escape to a more palatable -"  
"So I wanted to see you, so what?" Joe shouted. "You write me all these fucking letters, you don't let me forget a goddamn thing, and I wanted to see you!" David stared at him, fumbling inwardly against that cold creature, trying to lift it like a shield, trying to dispel it. Joe's mouth worked, he made an abortive gesture with his hand. "Shit," he said, then shoved past David towards the bedroom. David stood in the kitchen for a long moment, staring at the spot where Joe had been. When he finally followed after him, he found Joe sitting on the edge of the bed, tapping his knuckle against his mouth and staring at the floor. His gaze flicked briefly up to David, then back down. David moved slowly to stand beside the bed, then sighed and joined Joe on it, laying down on his back behind him.   
They stayed like that for David didn't know how long, not speaking, Joe looking at the floor, David at the ceiling. David didn't feel anything, and it was a relief. The anger had been building all week, fury at a future pain that he had known was coming but hadn't known the shape of. Now that it was here, now that he had indulged in a useless moment of railing against it, he could let it go numb, cut off blood flow and hope that it would some day fall away. Joe shifted on the bed, turning to look down at him.  
"I'm gonna be a good husband, Web."  
"Are you?" David asked, not cruel, just dully curious.  
"Yeah. I'm not gonna fuck around on her, risk bringing something home, you know?"  
"So this is it."   
Joe stared down at him for a long moment, then nodded. "Yeah, this is it."  
David knew he was waiting on him for a reaction. He searched sluggishly for something appropriate. "That's good, Lieb. Admirable." It was clear from Joe's expression that he hadn't hit on the right response, so he tried again. "Does she meet all the necessary requirements?" Joe looked at him blankly, and David gave him a weak grin. "Don't you remember? Big, soft breasts, and a smile to die for?"  
"Oh," Joe said, not smiling back. "Yeah, sure." He reached out and ran his thumb along David's lip. "It's a great smile. It drives me nuts." And then it hurt again, God, it hurt too much, and David didn't have any anger left to bury it with, and he didn't blame Joe, there was absolutely no one to blame.  
"God, Joe," he said, and pulled him down beside him. Joe tried to slot their mouths together, but David turned his face away, pulling his head into the crook of his neck instead, and Joe went complacently for once, folding up against him and breathing warm against David's collarbone, his arm curling around David's ribs. David wrapped one arm around his waist and the other around his shoulders, buried his nose against his hair and closed his eyes.   
It would make more sense for them, David supposed, to spend their last hours together fucking desperately, fighting and failing to instill a lifetime's worth of contact into the small notch of time they had left. But they didn't. David dragged his hands slowly over Joe's body instead, and Joe pressed David down against the bed and stared and stared at him. And when Joe left that evening, David couldn't even recall what they had said to each other, standing in the doorway. He thought maybe Joe told him to take care, he thought perhaps he had wished Joe a happy marriage. But maybe he hadn't said anything, maybe neither of them had. Either way, after Joe left, David leaned against the door as he smoked a cigarette and stared at his newly painted walls, a soft, muted gray, no matter what other color Joe had tried to call it. He finished his cigarette and left, walking through the falling dark to Barbara's apartment.   
"Oh, David," she said, when she opened the door and saw his face. She took him by the arm and pulled him inside, urging him down beside her on the sofa. David leaned his head against her shoulder, and she murmured wordlessly and wrapped an arm around him. "I suppose it was too late to guard against anything, wasn't it?" She said with feigned levity. "You and your heart."  
"I wish I had known you before the war," David said, breathing in the scent of her perfume. "I would have married you, and been so damned content that I never would have dreamed of volunteering for anything, much less the Airborne. They would have had to drag me to Europe."  
"Content," Barbara said with a soft sigh. "We would have been deliriously content, wouldn't we?" She pulled back, and David lifted his head to look at her. "Are you going to marry me, David?" She asked, knowing the answer, but David took her hand in both of his anyway, ran his thumb along her wrist.   
"You're matchless, Barbara," he said. "But I don't think I can." Everything tried to well up in his throat again, and he dropped his face against her hand, kissed her palm.  
"Oh, darling, it's alright," Barbara said, sounding for all the world like she meant it. "I understand, I do. It can't be helped." David pressed his eyes against her curled fingers, and she pulled him back up and kissed him gently on the cheek.  
The next morning David bought a can of paint, and painted his apartment over white again.


	3. July, 1953 - San Francisco, CA

David had always gotten the distinct impression that Chuck Grant disliked him, and so he was surprised when he attended the Easy reunion in '52, and Grant walked up to him with a wide smile and shook his hand with every indication of happiness. He held his left arm stiffly against his side, but barring that one, small tell, he seemed to have made a complete recovery from the terrible wound he had suffered in Austria. They chatted pleasantly back and forth, and maybe Grant was just being polite, but he seemed sincere as far as David could tell when he told him to stop by and see him if he was ever in San Francisco. _Never_ , David had thought at the time. _I'm never going there_ , but that had been nearly a year and a half ago, and time had done what it did best, and given David a little distance from all those passionate vows he'd made to himself about forever avoiding a city on account of a single person.   
Still, they had never really been friends, and David half-expected Grant to beg off when he called him from his hotel room and asked if it he might drop in.   
"You kidding me?" He said. "Yeah, come on by the shop. I'll give Pat a call and we can go out for a drink together." David took his time unpacking, stopping often to stare out the window at his view of the city, colorful even through the fog, tiered and vibrant. He took a deliberately meandering route to Grant's tobacconist shop, riding the cable car beyond his stop and walking back at a leisurely pace. "You're right on time," Grant said, when David came through the door and tapped the bell sitting on the counter with a grin.   
"Don't sound so surprised," David drawled.  
"What, everyone knows how you like to show up late to shit," Grant said, but he smiled easily when he said it, and David just shook his head and huffed a laugh. "Give me a minute, I'm closing up. Hey, you want something?" He gestured towards the wall of dried tobacco.  
"I've been trying to quit," David replied. "But what the hell."  
"On the house," Grant said, handing him a bag.  
"Thanks," David said, oddly touched. Half an hour later, he sat at the bar and rolled a smoke for each of them while Grant and Christenson argued over what their first round should be. Grant argued so vociferously in favor of his preferred brand of beer, and Pat countered his every argument with such weary indifference, that it was clear that they had been seeing plenty of each other over the years.  
"I take it you two do this often," David said, when they finally settled on steam beers to start the night off and accepted the freshly rolled cigarettes.   
"No way," Grant answered quickly. "He's got awful taste, Web."  
"We get together every now and then," Pat said, ignoring Grant. "I'm just in Oakland, and I have to get this way often enough for work. Why not, you know?"  
"It's nice," David said. "I don't see any of the guys outside of reunions."  
"It's alright," Grant said. "Who the hell else are we gonna drink with, right?" Pat and David grinned at each other over his head. "Hey, you ever hear anything from Liebgott?" He asked suddenly.  
"No," David said, overwhelmingly grateful for the mug of beer that the bartender slid in front of him. He took a measured sip. "I don't know where he is."  
"It doesn't make sense. You know Pat even went by his folk's place, and his old man told him to clear off?"  
"Really?"  
"Yeah. Said Joe didn't live there, and if he did he wouldn't want to see anybody from Easy."  
"He was very polite," Christenson chimed in. "But he made it clear I shouldn't come back around."  
"It's been almost eight years, you'd think he'd come to a reunion, or at least look his fucking neighbors up," Grant said, gesturing between himself and Christenson.  
"Well, I suppose we all handled it differently, coming home." David didn't know why he should feel guilty, or why he should feel compelled to try to defend Joe.   
"Just can't believe he'd freeze us out like that," Grant muttered into his beer. Pat put a hand on his shoulder and shot David a look.  
"So, Web, what brings you to the West Coast?" He asked, holding his gaze.  
"New job," David said. "Starting next month I'll be writing for Van Nuys News in L.A."  
"Yeah?" Grant said. "Hey, congrats." He raised his beer, and David knocked their mugs together.  
"Thank you. I have time to kill between jobs, and thought I should take the opportunity to play tourist."  
"You picked the right city for it," Pat said. "You'll have to come out with us again before you take off."  
"Don't go ending the night before it gets started," Grant said. "Come on, to us, right? To Easy."  
"To Easy," Pat and David echoed, and the three of them tipped their heads back and drained their glasses.  
"So you really don't know," Pat said later that night, as he drove David back to his hotel.   
"What's that?"  
"Where Liebgott might have ended up."  
"No," David said, irritated. "Why does everyone keep asking me that?"  
"You two were friendly for a while there," Pat said with a shrug. "You're more likely to know than most."  
"It really bothers Grant, doesn't it?"  
"Yeah." Pat grimaced. "Those first years, he kept thinking Joe would turn up. I don't think he expects it anymore, but it still gets to him." He gave David a sidelong glance. "I think he's in Oakland. I could probably find him, if I put enough effort into it, but he obviously doesn't want to be found." He pulled to a stop in front of David's hotel, turning in his seat to look him in the eye. "It was funny, when I went by his parent's place. When I told his father we served together, first thing he says, he says, 'Are you David Webster?' Right off, he asked me that." He looked at David expectantly.  
"Well, I wrote to him," David said, looking away, hoping he didn't look as exposed and guilty as he felt. "He never wrote back."  
"Huh."  
"I don't know what to tell you, Pat," David said coldly. "I'm sorry. I don't know what happened to Joe."

* * *

  
It wasn't even much of a lie, which only made the fact that Christenson clearly didn't believe him more aggravating. It was mostly true. David hadn't heard from Joe since he closed the door behind him more than two years ago, had stopped writing him letters, had stopped thinking about him entirely, or tried to for a time. He didn't know where Joe was, presumably living somewhere in Oakland with his wife and a child or two by now. David wouldn't have been able to do anything other than confirm what Grant and Christenson already knew: that Joe wanted to put the war behind him as if it had never happened.  
And he certainly couldn't have told the truth, told them that he'd come to San Francisco with the vague plan of finding Joe. How would he have explained it, when he could scarcely understand himself? He needed to apologize, but for what? He hadn't done anything wrong. But he hated the way they had left things, so tragically heavy, as if there wasn't a whole spectrum of potential relationships between lovers and strangers. Why shouldn't they write each other, why shouldn't they be friends? They had been friends before, or something quite close to friends. David missed him, and was tired of trying to tell himself otherwise.   
He didn't know what to make of what Pat had told him about Joe's father, but the simplest explanation was most likely the correct one. He had, after all, written Joe an appalling amount of letters. So when he assured himself the following evening that he wasn't nervous, when he reminded himself as he shaved and showered that he had a solid chance of being warmly received by Joe's parents, he almost managed to believe that it would all turn out alright. But his fingers were stiff and uncooperative as he buttoned his shirt, and he eventually had to stop and sit down on the edge of the bed. The problem, after all, was Joe. David didn't know how he would react to seeing him again. There was a very real possibility that he would tell him to get the hell out, wouldn't give him the chance to make his case. David had considered writing him a letter first, but it was easier to ignore a slip of paper than a person standing at your door, and he'd had the time to spare between jobs.  
_Nothing to gain from putting it off_ , he told himself, and got to his feet.  
David's first impression of the house was an uncharitable one, because it was an awful color, something between yellow and tan, with an unpleasant greenish tint that reminded him of bile, or dead grass. Where a small front yard should be, there was just paving, gray stones laid out in squares, with only a thin strip of dirt left in front of the porch, where a single large rose bush was planted. David stood a moment in front of it, then stepped up onto the porch. His stomach was roiling.  
The door opened at his knock to reveal a woman, her hair pulled back and tucked away under a scarf, wiping her hands on her apron as she peered up at him. "Can I help you?" She asked.  
"Hello," David said, giving her what he hoped was an easy smile. "Is this the Liebgott residence?"  
The woman turned her head to the side, still holding eye contact with David. "Ma!" She shouted into the house, then switched to an accented German so familiar that it made David's chest ache. " _Does Klara know you've invited another man around to dinner?_ "  
" _What?_ " A voice called sharply, and then the door opened the rest of the way, and David found himself staring at another young woman, similarly scarfed and aproned. " _Oh, he's beautiful_ ," the second one said. " _This one I will marry._ " The first one snorted a soft laugh.  
"That's alright," David said, amused. " _I'm not looking to settle down_." They gaped at him, then glanced at each other and burst out laughing.   
"Oh, God," the first woman said. "I'd apologize, but it's best to know what you're getting into, hmm? If you stay after that, Klara really will have to marry you." Someone came up behind her, and she shifted closer to her sister to make room for a third woman, gray-haired and pink-cheeked. "Were you really not gonna tell anyone that we'd have a guest, Ma?"  
"I do not know this man," the woman said, her English heavily accented, but clear. "Where do you live?" She asked David, quite seriously, as if he were a lost child.  
"Not anywhere at the moment," he said dryly, and couldn't help but smile at the woman's alarmed expression. "Are you Mary Liebgott?"  
"Yes," she replied, lifting her chin. David held out his hand.  
"It's a pleasure to meet you. I'm David Webster. I served with your son in the 101st." He looked over at the two young women, Joe's sisters. "You're Klara, and so you must be Judy?"  
"Yes," Judy said, startled. "David Webster? The one who used to write to Joe?"  
"Oh!" Joe's mother threw her hands up. "By God, come in, you must come in." She ushered David into the house. "You will stay for dinner. You are so tall." She looked him over approvingly, then glanced at Klara.  
"Ma, stop," Klara said, rolling her eyes. "What would I do with a guy like that?"  
" _You would give him beautiful babies, foolish girl_ ," she answered.  
"He speaks German, Ma," Judy said.   
"Well, now he knows," she said, waving her hand dismissively, entirely unashamed. "You two, the food, go. You," she said, turning back to David. "Would you like coffee? Wine?"  
"No, thank you," David said. "You're very kind, but I don't want to intrude. I was just hoping for Joe's address."  
"You wish to see Joseph? He will be here soon."  
"Oh?" David said blankly.  
"I'm the only one still at home," Klara said, still lingering in the room. "But everyone comes Thursday nights for dinner. Joe usually shows up late."  
"Why are you not helping your sister?"  
"It's beef and broth, Ma, there's not much to it."  
"Check the cake. Sit, be comfortable," she said to David. "I will bring you a glass of wine."  
The house's interior was vastly different from its outer appearance. David sat down in the armchair that Joe's mother gestured him towards and looked around the room. Everything was arranged just so, the furniture charmingly unmatched and clearly kept with care. There was a fireplace on the far end of the room, and shelves on either side of it filled with framed photos. David wanted to get up and look at them, but sat frozen in the chair instead like an abandoned doll. So the entire family came together each week to see one another, and Joe tended to show up late. David wondered why that was. Did his wife arrive late as well, or would she come separately, and did that mean David would soon be meeting the woman Joe married?  
"Here." David looked up to see Judy standing beside his chair, holding a glass of wine out towards him. "I helped myself to one," she said, lifting her other hand to reveal a matching glass.  
"Thank you," David said, taking the glass from her. Judy sat down across from him, crossing her legs and propping her chin in her hand, watching him curiously. She had removed her apron and scarf, and her hair was the same shade of Joe's, but fell straight instead of in waves. "Your parents have a beautiful home."  
"Yeah. They fixed it up about five years back. Joe had been saving his pay to buy them a new house, but then he comes home and pop refuses to go. There's nothing wrong with this house, he says. There's plenty wrong with it, we say, it's falling down around your ears, and hasn't Joe been saying this whole time that he's gonna buy you and Ma a new place with his pay from the army? But pop gets stubborn, and ma acts like it's all him, but we can tell she doesn't want to go either. So what does Joe do? Hires a team of guys and has them gut the place and fix it up exactly how ma and pop want it. It probably would have been cheaper to just move them someplace else, but they were over the moon about it, and they ended up getting a grandkid out of the deal. Gertie went and married one of the plumbers."  
David sank slowly back in his seat, holding the wine in a careful grip. His heart was beating fast in his chest, he was nearly as thrilled as if Joe himself were sitting across from him, because _this_ was what he had been starving for. Stories, anecdotes, any little scrap he could snatch up and store away, use to fill in those gaping holes. About five years back, Judy had said. So it had taken place shortly after Joe had come home. Joe hadn't told him, but then he wouldn't, it was a story that cast him in far too good a light.   
"It's nice," he said eventually. "Hearing about him like that. It's a reminder that what any of us knew about each other during the war is only part of the story."  
"Let's swap," Judy said, sitting forward. "I ask a question of you about Joe during the war, and then you ask me one about him since then."  
"I don't know that -"  
"Come on, you want to, don't try and hide it." David stared into his wine as he considered. If Joe were here, he would likely do David physical violence for even thinking about agreeing. But he wasn't here, and David was no saint. He wanted to know. If Judy asked anything too personal, he would simply refuse to answer.   
"Alright. You go first."  
"Okay," she said, and took a sip of her wine. David copied her. "What's the worst thing Joe did during the war?"  
_Going right for the gut_ , David thought, but then he saw the mischievous smile on Judy's face, and realized she was looking for a different story entirely, some tale of Joe misbehaving, something light to start the game off. "Well, I may biased, but in my opinion the worst thing he did was make me look like an idiot on a daily basis." And he told her the story of Malarkey's nonexistent battlefield commission.  
"How horrible," Judy said, delighted. "You poor thing. You're very gullible though, aren't you."  
"Don't you take his side too," David said, grinning. "Alright, my turn." He thought back to his earlier musings. "Why does Joe usually show up late to these dinners?"  
"Work," Judy answered promptly. "He works too hard, driving his cab or covering the shop on slow days so pop can relax." She frowned, then smiled, flitting quickly from one expression to the other. "But honestly, I think he gets tired of ma fussing over him. So he shows up late and ducks out early. You know anything about overbearing mothers?"  
"A little," David said. "My mother worried over me during the war, of course, but I suppose that could be said for most mothers." He frowned, thinking. "No, she isn't so overbearing, now that I think about it. She enjoys us when we're with her, and enjoys her own company when we're gone."  
"Must be nice," Judy said. Then, "How did Joe get that scar on his neck?"  
"Oh, that," David said with a short laugh. "He got that on patrol one night when he mistook some Germans for one of our own and called out to them. They lobbed a grenade at him, and the shrapnel nicked him in the neck." He decided not to mention Alley; Judy looked shocked enough as it was. "They tried to get him shipped out to a hospital over it, but he refused to go. He didn't want to leave the company."  
"Really?" Judy breathed. Her hand lifted reflexively towards her own neck. "I asked him once, and he just shrugged and said it was nothing. Having a grenade thrown at you, nothing, how do you like that?"  
"If it's any consolation, knowing Joe, he probably truly doesn't think it's worth commenting on."  
"Is that what you think?"   
"No," he answered, startled. "Of course not. It's all worth commenting on, it's just, there aren't any words for it." He took another sip of wine, glancing towards the fireplace, the collection of smiling faces. "It never got easier, or less terrifying, seeing someone get hit. Your first thought is always, that's it, they're gone. And then you're moving, and it doesn't matter how bad it is, you're always saying the same thing, telling them it's nothing, that they're going to be fine. Sometimes it turned out to be true, and other times." He stopped, forcing his mouth shut. "But Joe, it really could have been much worse. It bled decently though. I remember that." They hadn't had much to do with each other back then, but Joe had passed David on the road back to battalion, leading a line of Kraut prisoners. He hadn't said anything to David, other than ask if he had any ammo left in his musette bag, and had scowled at him when David told him he was out. It wasn't until much later that David heard how Winters had ordered Joe to drop his ammo.  
"Your turn."  
"Hmm?" David turned back towards her, away from the pictures.  
"Your turn for a question," Judy prompted, too gently.  
"Oh. Right." He thought for a moment, then smiled, and then smiled even more when he realized it was genuine, that he wasn't having to force it. "Any children yet? Joe always said he was going to buy a big house and fill it with little Liebgotts."  
"Nope, no kids. It drives ma nuts. Every time she sees him, she's on him to find a nice girl and give her some grandchildren, like she doesn't have eight already."  
"Find a. But he." David suddenly felt too warm. "The last time he wrote me, he said he was getting married."  
"He wrote you that?" Judy said sharply. Then, "No, he didn't get married." She gave David a cool, appraising look, then seemed to relent. "Look, don't mention that to him, alright?"  
"Alright." His lips were numb, the blood was pounding in his ears.  
"It all sort of came apart at the last minute. Her family was furious. Ma cried for a week. One of her kids finally gets in with a nice Jewish family, and then he goes and breaks it off." She gulped her wine, gestured angrily with the empty glass. "Like she didn't convert more than forty years ago, you know?"  
David barely heard her. He couldn't hear anything over the roaring sound that logic told him must be coming from his own head. He was going to kill Joe. How could he, how could he? He couldn't even think for that stunned voice, repeating the same question over and over in his mind. God, he would kill him, no, he wouldn't do any such thing, he was leaving, this was a mistake. _Damn you Joe, how could you?_  
"Maybe I should -" He said, and then the door swung open, and a horde, an actual horde, of children spilled into the room. Three of them threw themselves at Judy, but one, a little girl, stopped in front of David.  
"Who are you?" She asked, staring  
"I'm David," he replied, staring back.   
"Oh," she said, wrinkling her nose as if his name emitted an odor. She turned away and disappeared deeper into the house.  
"Hi." David looked up to see a man standing before him, hand extended. "Jake. Are you here for Klara?" He was Joe, if all of Joe's most interesting features had been smoothed down and gentled into mildness. David shook his hand, trying not to gape at him.  
"No," Judy said with a laugh. She was standing up now, a child on each hip. "He's a friend of Joe's. Everyone, this is David Webster." David stood too, suddenly surrounded by a crush of people, all of them looking at him, from the older gentleman closing the door behind the rest of them, to the heavy-lidded child gnawing its own fist as it laid its head on its mother's shoulder. Judy went around the room, telling David their names. There was Alma, whom everyone called Al, the eldest after Joe, and her husband and their four children, and then Jacob and his wife, who had three of their own, then Gertie, who's husband couldn't make it tonight, but here is their little Lise, isn't she a sweet _mausi_?  
"Yes, very," David agreed.  
"Pop, c'mere, come meet Joe's pal," Al said, drawing her father forward.  
"Mr. Liebgott, it's a pleasure," David said, holding out his hand.  
"David Webster?" He asked, staring up at him, blinking behind thick-rimmed glasses that magnified his eyes. He was clearly still quite spry, but was smaller than his children, beginning to shrink in on himself in the way of the elderly. He brushed David's arm away, reaching up and putting his hands on either side of his face.   
"Oh, I -"  
"Welcome, David," Joe's father said, patting his cheek, huge dark eyes brimming with feeling. "You are always welcome."  
"Thank you," David said, hopelessly lost, moved without understanding why.  
"Joe's gonna shit when he walks in."  
"Gertie!" Then they all started talking at once, and Joe's father urged David to sit again, and David couldn't possibly tell the man no.   
David didn't have experience with the intimacies of any family other than his own, but he was certain the Liebgotts were unique. Other families couldn't possibly be so loud, or so casually blunt with one another. Joe's siblings seemed to be the ones in charge, ordering their mother and father about with the clear assumption that they would be obeyed, but with such open affection that the lack of deference wasn't missed. The children were largely ignored, allowed to pour over the house and run from room to room, shouting and ducking between legs and around furniture. When Klara arrived and herded them into the dining room, then all but pushed David down into a chair next to Al's husband Max, he chuckled at the look on David's face.   
"I'd say you get used to it, but then I'd be lying," he said. David managed to smile through his bewilderment. And then Joe's mother set a plate down in front of him and shook his shoulder and told him to eat, eat. So David ate, and despite having felt decidedly sick for the majority of the day, the food somehow settled his stomach, helped him steady. A person, he decided, couldn't help but like the Liebgotts. They were rough, and talkative, and lovingly brusque with one another. David began to relax, taken in, and soon found himself capable of responding with more than just a reflective smile and nod.  
He was enjoying himself so much that he didn't think of what it meant when he heard the sound of the door opening in the next room, until Judy stood up and said, "That'll be Carl and Joe." Then he swallowed his mouthful of beef only halfway chewed, and it got caught in his throat and made him cough, and Klara and Max both started thumping him on the back.   
"You're looking evil," he heard a voice say, Joe's voice. "Why're you leering at us?"  
"Hey, baby," another voice said, presumably Carl, Judy's husband of a month.  
"Come into the dining room, Joe," Judy said. "We've got a surprise for you." David thought about throwing himself under the table, or through the window.  
"What, besides dinner? Don't tell me, Klara busted the plaster with her big butt again."  
"They're called hips, you jerk," Klara shouted.  
"Get Max or Jacob to fix it, I don't know why you gotta sit around and wait on me." His voice was drawing closer.  
"Would you stop talking about the wall, there's nothing wrong with the wall," Judy said, and then she appeared in the doorway, dragging Joe along behind her. Joe glanced around the room first, as if looking for what might be broken, then skimmed his family, his eyes stopping on David. He looked blank for a moment, and then his head pulled back in sudden surprised recognition.   
"David," he said, blinking rapidly in the way he did when he was distressed. "Uh. Web."   
"Hey, Lieb," David said, and Joe's mouth twitched, as if surprised to hear him speak. David hesitated a moment, then stood from his seat.  
Joe took another step into the room, dropping the bag he had been carrying to the floor. "Web, what're you doing here?" David shrugged, trying to summon up an apologetic grin.  
"I was in the city, and thought I'd stop by."  
"Stop by my folk's place," Joe said, starting to sound accusing.  
"Well, it was the only address I had."  
" _Joseph, is this how I raised you?_ " His mother berated from her seat. " _Greet your friend as he deserves, such a nice young man, so polite -_ "  
"Alright, Ma, Jesus," Joe said, rolling his eyes. He shot David a look, _see what you've done?_ Then he stepped forward and held out his hand, and David took it, flustered. They had never shaken hands before. Joe squeezed, just this side of too hard. "Hey, Web," he said, a challenge in his eyes and the tilt of his chin. "Come on, let's have a smoke." Then his hand shifted up to David's elbow, and he was half tugging, half shoving David towards the door.   
"You're not eating?" Al asked.  
"I'll be back in a minute," Joe said over his shoulder, shoving David more openly once they stepped into the kitchen. "Move it," he muttered to him in a low scrape.  
"I'm going," David said, but Joe still propelled him through the kitchen and out the back door. The small back yard had received a similar treatment as the front of the house, paved with the same plain gray stones, adorned here and there with planters growing scraggly flowers. "Did your parents do this?" He asked, gesturing to the paving.  
"What, you work for the city or something?" Joe said sarcastically. "My old man didn't want to mow anymore. Why are you here?"  
"I didn't intend to stay for dinner, believe me. I was just hoping to get your address." David turned around to face him. He looked nearly the same, but David could see faint lines beginning to crease the corners of his eyes, the sides of his mouth. The injustice of it suddenly struck David, that he should look at Joe and be surprised by time's subtle marks, that they should jar against the image that David held of him in his head. It was a privilege, having the chance to grow old, but he should have been able to witness it daily, each line forming so gradually that it was always just Joe, and David only shocked when he happened to look at an old photograph, and think, _look at how young we used to be._  
"Why were you after my address?" Joe asked sharply.  
"After your address," David huffed, recovering, pulling away from his thoughts. "Why do you have to say it like that? Look, I was in the city, and I just thought," he threw up a hand. "I don't know, that it was ridiculous, that there wasn't a good reason to not stop in and say hello."  
"No good reason, huh?"  
"Would you stop acting so suspicious? I'm not here to try to," he lowered his voice, "seduce you, or -"  
"Seduce me? Yeah, right." Joe was next to spluttering. "You? Who the fuck even says that?"  
"God, would you shut up? I just thought it might be nice to see you - " Joe scoffed and opened his mouth, and David raised his voice to talk over him, "- so I stopped by to ask for your address and the next thing I know your mother's pouring me wine, and your father's patting me on the cheek, and I'm eating dinner with your family." Joe scowled at him, but didn't speak. "I like them, by the way. Your brother and sisters speak German with your same atrocious accent."  
"You're the one with the fucking terrible accent," Joe shot back. But then he smiled, just for a moment, just a flicker in the corner of his mouth. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, holding it out to David until he took one. David leaned in to let Joe light his smoke, watching his face, the way his eyes dropped towards David's mouth, the way he pressed his tongue just so against his bottom lip. He looked tired, and oddly perfect. David wanted to grab him by the shoulders and demand to know why, why, he wanted to shove him back against the side of the house and make him pay in other ways. He could strike him, he could bend him back on himself and kiss him -  
"Fuck, David," Joe grated out, still standing too close. "You shouldn't have fucking come here." They stepped away from each other and finished their cigarettes in silence, the sound of talk and laughter drifting to them from inside the house. "Where're you staying?" Joe asked, dropping his butt to the ground and grinding it out with the toe of his shoe. "I'll give you a lift back."  
"I may have just met your mother, but I don't think she's letting you leave without eating."  
"Shit, you're right." Joe turned back to the house, and David followed after him.  
"All better now, you old grouch?" Gertie asked when they reappeared in the dining room.  
"Yeah, yeah," Joe said, throwing an arm around her. "Whoa, easy cowboy," he shouted, as one of the children collided against his leg. He grabbed him and slung him over his shoulder.  
"What'd you bring us?" The boy asked, upside-down.  
"Get in that bag and look, why don't you." He set him back on his feet, and the boy bounded over to Joe's abandoned bag, then crowed loudly.  
"Fireworks!" He shouted, holding the brightly colored tubes over his head triumphantly.  
"Real swell of you, Joe," Max said dryly.  
"Hey, you're welcome. You're done eating, right? Take 'em outside, let me have your seat." The house grew marginally quieter as half the adults filed outside to manage the children, conversation continuing on with the ones that remained as if nothing had occurred. Joe dropped down into Max's abandoned seat and gestured impatiently at David until he caught on and sat down beside him. "Thanks, Al," Joe said, when she appeared behind him and set a plate at his elbow.  
"It's cold, don't get too excited," she said. "David, would you like some cake?"  
"Of course he wants cake," Joe said before David could answer. "You want the cake," he said to David.  
"I guess I want cake," David said to Al with a laugh. She smiled, her eyes moving between them.  
It was telling, the way Joe's family seemed to beam whenever they spoke to him, even when they were arguing with him over something, which they often were. David wondered if was due to Joe's natural position in the family as the eldest child and son, or if it had something to do with the years he had been separated from them, during the war and then afterwards. He ate a slice of cake, rich chocolate and apricot, and watched them go at each other with an embarrasingly soft feeling in his chest. It was a relief, some sort of gift, to know that Joe had a family like this, that no matter what else might have not gone ideally for either of them, Joe had this.   
"Stop with the smile," Joe said when he turned to look at him, but David couldn't help it. And later, as they were leaving, Joe having to fend his mother and sisters off as he went, his father stopped David on the porch with a hand on his arm, waiting until he turned around to face him.  
"David. You remember what I said." David didn't know what else to do, other than smile and hold his gaze, and shake the hand that was offered to him. He turned around to find Joe watching them suspiciously.  
"See you, Pop."  
"Goodnight, Joseph." David followed Joe to his car, settling into the passenger seat with a sigh.  
"What was that?" Joe asked as he closed the door. David gave a stunned laugh.  
"I don't know. You tell me. How does your entire family know who I am?"  
"'Cause they don't know how to mind their own business and my old man's got a big yap." Joe started the car, darting a quick glance at David. "He doesn't know anything. Just that you're the only guy from Easy I kept up with. And, uh. I told him how I came to see you right before coming home."  
"And he thinks I had something to do with it? I guess you didn't tell him how all you did was listen to records and insult me."  
"Yeah," Joe said. "So, you gonna tell me what you're doing in Frisco?"  
"I've got a new job. Not here," he added hastily, raising his voice to be heard over the whipping wind as they picked up speed. "In Los Angeles. It starts next month. I'm taking it easy in the meantime."  
"What, you didn't want to spend it touring Europe or something?"  
"I've already done that, thanks." Joe barked a laugh. "No, I. Well, if I'm being entirely honest, I suppose I mostly came out here to see you." Joe slid him a glance, his face dimming and sharpening as they passed cars and lit up business signs.   
"Why L.A.?"  
"I wanted something near the ocean, and as far away from my family as I could get."  
"Why, what's their problem?"  
"Nothing. There's no problem." How would he even begin to explain? "I just need a little distance."  
"Right," Joe said with a snort.  
"How have you been? Judy tells me you work too hard."  
"Whatever," Joe said, sneering. "I work the amount I want. Gotta keep moving, you know?"   
"I suppose," David said doubtfully. "I intend to enjoy not working for a while."  
"You barely work anyway. Writing's not work. You just write down shit you see."  
"That's exactly it, Lieb," David drawled. "You've found me out." Joe grinned big out of the side of his mouth.  
"Don't get all clenched up." They crossed the Bay Bridge, and David turned his attention to the view, the sky a blue so deep it could only be called indigo, and the faintest lavender glow across the horizon.   
"Look at that," he breathed. "It's beautiful."  
"You're an idiot, I swear to God," Joe said, but he propped his arm on his open window and let David enjoy it. They didn't speak again until Joe pulled to a stop outside of David's hotel. "Well," Joe said, turning to look at him. "Get out."  
David drummed his fingers against his knee, then gripped it nervously. "Will you come up?"  
"No," Joe answered instantly. "What are you even." He stopped, running a hand through his hair and giving an overly dramatic groan. "How's Barb?" He asked, all venom.  
"Barb? No one calls her Barb." There was a fluttering, hopeful feeling in his chest, it was making him feel sick again. "She's fine, still living in Manhattan. Last time we spoke, she told me she thought she might be in love." Joe was giving him a flat, unreadable stare. "We stopped seeing each other over two years ago, Joe."  
"Why?"  
"Why the hell do you think?" David snapped, suddenly furious. His fist slammed against the car's dashboard, and he jumped, surprised by his own body. He snatched it back and pressed it against his side, glancing guiltily at Joe. He hadn't moved, his expression hadn't changed. David let out a shaky breath. "What about you? Why didn't you get married?"  
"Jesus Christ, is there anything they didn't tell you?" Joe curled down in his seat, scowling.  
"Look, just. Come up, please. We can just talk."  
"Yeah, 'cause that's what I want to do. Talk more."  
"Then come up so we can fuck each other's brains out. I'd do that too."   
Joe grinned, sudden and wide. "Damn, Web. You and that mouth." He stared at him, his grin turning jerky, a baring of teeth. "Okay. Let's go."   
David found himself fighting against a jumpy, unsettled feeling as they made their way up the sidewalk, then through the lobby. It wasn't until they were walking down the hall towards his room that he realized what was causing it. He swung his head around to look at Joe. "Why are you walking behind me?" Joe gave him an incredulous look.  
"What, like I know where to go? I don't know your fucking room number."  
"It's never stopped you before," David pointed out, but resumed walking. It felt all wrong, for Joe to be slouching along behind him, out of his line of sight. Even in Cambridge and New York, when David was ostensibly leading the way, Joe always walked in front, only looking back to David when an indication of direction was required from him. When he unlocked the door to his room, David made a show of opening it and gesturing Joe through before him, and expelled a relieved breath when Joe walked in without hesitation or comment. He followed after him, closing and latching the door behind them.  
Joe was standing in the middle of the room, watching him with a lightly mocking smirk, waiting to see what he would do next. Well, the joke was on them both, because David had never known what to do about Joe. He stepped around him and closed the blinds, thought for a moment, then walked around the room, turning on all the lights.  
"You didn't get a good enough look?"  
"It seems like every time we do this, we're holed up in some dark room with no light."  
"Yeah, otherwise called your place," Joe sneered. "So what?"  
"Well." David flicked the last switch, then came to stand in front of him. "If I could have you any way I wanted, it'd be the middle of the day, with a huge fucking window that we left wide open, so I could really see you." Joe stared at him, his eyes growing dark. "But this will have to to." He took hold of Joe's shirt by the bottom edge, running the fabric between his thumb and forefinger. It was dully soft, in the way that clothing became when it had been worn and washed often. He tugged lightly. "Can I take this off?"  
"Yeah," Joe said, the scrape along his throat more pronounced than usual. "Sure." He tugged his arms free in two quick jerking motions, and David pulled the shirt over his head and tossed it to the floor. He looked him over, pleased to see he was the same as David remembered from the last time they had been together, healthy, wiry and lean.  
"What about you?" He flipped the button on Joe's jeans loose and slid the zipper down slowly, letting his knuckles skim along him as he went.  
"Huh?"  
"What would you like, if we could do anything?" David shot him a look. "Don't tell me you haven't thought about it."   
"Like I don't have better shit to do than sit around thinking up different places to fuck you."  
"I thought about it," David admitted easily. "I tried not to, but you see how that went." He gripped Joe through his underwear, dragged his hand down, then back up, and Joe exhaled sharply. "And I didn't say anything about different places." Joe's eyes had started to slide shut, but now he opened them and glared. David grinned back. "So. What different places have you imagined me fucking you?"  
"Get it straight." Joe pushed his hand away, then grabbed him by his belt and pulled him flush against him. "If I'm bothering to think about us, you're not fucking me, sweetheart. I'm fucking you."  
"In every one?" David asked challengingly. "You're a goddamn liar." Joe scoffed but didn't say anything more, rocking against him instead, the sweetly unsatisfying drag of it pulling a groan out of David. He grabbed Joe tightly by his hips, and for a moment there wasn't anything but the grappling struggle to get closer, to match their motions one to the other, their faces so near that David could feel Joe's breath on his neck, that it would only take the smallest movement to bring their mouths together. But neither of them did, holding back instead, watching each other. "Go on," David said, having to tamp down on a dangerously crazed feeling as he watched Joe's teeth bite down on his own lip. "Tell me about one of them."  
"Talk," Joe grated out. "Jesus, you're always." He stopped with a grunt, sliding his hands around to grab David's ass, taking control of the pacing. "You remember that farmhouse they had us in? In Germany?"  
"Which one?"  
"The fucking farmhouse. The fucking farmhouse with the barn."  
David bent his head and bit and licked along his collarbone. "I don't know, Lieb, we only stayed at half a dozen farmhouses with barns nearby."  
"Doesn't matter. I thought about fucking you in every one of them, anyway."  
"Yeah?"  
"Yeah. You'd come around with that clueless look on your face, always talking about some goddamn thing that nobody gave a shit about, and I'd think, a guy like that, he's only good for one thing, you know? You're wasted on anything but fucking."  
"You're such an asshole."  
"Then I'd think out which room in the place we'd be most likely to be left the hell alone for a minute, and think about how I'd get a hold of you and drag you up there and just - Jesus Christ - fuck you up the way you deserve."  
It wasn't sweet. There wasn't anything sweet about it. But David felt something perilously close to tenderness move in his chest. He moaned and pulled back so that he could look at him, watch him. "Tell me another one." Joe cursed and let go of him, pushing him back half a step, his hands coming around to attack his buckle.  
"You know where I'd like to fuck you? Back of my cab."  
"What, really?" He hadn't expected that, but the image that flashed in his mind, combined with Joe's hands roughly pulling his trousers open, made his breath hitch, made him grab Joe by his shoulders.  
"People treat the back of a cab like a whorehouse lounge. I've seen it all." Joe shoved David's underwear out of the way, then pressed his hand against him, palming him. "I drive them wherever they tell me they wanna go, watch 'em go at each other, and I couldn't give less of a shit." His hand started to move on David, dry and too rough, and all David could do was moan and let his head fall back and listen as Joe continued talking. "I just think, these stupid bastards, they haven't seen your mouth, much less fucked it. They're losing it two feet behind me, and they don't know a damn thing, don't know what I've had." His voice was growing tighter, almost angry. "If it were me and you back there, the guy driving that cab would actually have something to be fucking jealous of. He'd see you all laid out across the seat for me, hear the sounds you make for me." David couldn't control the way his hips were twitching in Joe's grasp, couldn't fight the building rush of sensation. "See the way you look when you're all fucked out and open-mouthed, you're so fucking good - " David made a helplessly choked sound as he came, and Joe clamped his mouth down on his chest, teeth and a hot wet tongue that David could feel even through the cloth of his shirt, and he gasped and clung on to him, half sagging against him, Joe's hand still moving, but slower, a counterpoint to his nipping teeth. "You're the same as always, Jesus Christ," Joe said against the moist fabric of his shirt. "Took you what, sixty seconds?"  
"Fuck you," David said by rote. How long could he be expected to last, honestly? Missing someone so damn much, finally being able to see and touch them again. He pulled back, pulled Joe away with a hand on each shoulder. How was it possible for so much to be held between two hands? David cupped his cheek, ran his other hand up his neck, pressing his thumb against his steadily beating pulse. The wide, toothy smiles and grimacing smirks, the dark gaze like a barred door that he opened only for a privileged few. A man who had killed without compunction and who came apart for David with groans and curses, who David had watched under skies blue and gray and black and under the low light of a bedside lamp and God, he'd seen and known him so many ways but it wasn't nearly enough. How was he holding all that between his hands, how could he keep letting it go? "Joe," He murmured, tipping his head back, brushing their lips together. "Joe, liebling."   
"God, suck me off," Joe said, pushing down against his shoulders, but it was halfhearted, and when David slotted their mouths together Joe's only sign of protest was a low throaty sound of aggrievement. His tongue darted into David's mouth, and how, David thought wildly, how was it possible to have just gotten off and still feel as if they hadn't even begun, that they were still circling each other? He sucked on Joe's tongue, the two of them grappling for control of the kiss, Joe yanking on his hair, David's hands rough as he tried to hold Joe in place by his jaw. "Geroff," Joe finally said, jerking his head back. "Goddamn it, quit fucking around." He used his hold on David's hair to try to tug him downwards.  
"No," David said, pulling free with a pained hiss. "I'm not doing that."  
"What?" Joe looked apoplectic. "What the fuck, Web?"  
"I said I wanted to see you." David pushed him backward towards the bed, and he supposed he had the strange hesitancy he had noted earlier to thank for the way Joe let it happen, Joe who never relinquished control, in bed or otherwise. He plopped down on the bed without a word, and David knelt between his legs to pull his jeans off.  
"Jesus," Joe said, when David pressed his face against his crotch for a moment before sliding his underwear down. "You're fucking kidding me if you think you're - where the fuck are you going?"  
"One second," David said over his shoulder, crossing the room as quickly as he could to dig around his suitcase until he unearthed his jar of Vaseline. Joe gave a sharp, loud laugh when he saw it.  
"Gotta say, I'm feeling a little hunted," he said smugly, leaning back on his hands. "Just thought you'd stop in and say hello, huh?"  
Now was not the time to admit that he didn't travel anywhere these days unprepared, in case an opportunity presented itself. David had all but abandoned women after Barbara, and had found that he enjoyed men more the further away from home he was. He had become something of an expert at rooting out where to find it, 'it' being anonymous sex, the less known about his partner the better. Besides, Joe wasn't entirely wrong. "I wasn't expecting it," he said, returning to the bed. "But I hoped."  
"Serve you right if I was married," Joe said. His words fell on David like a heavy weight, smothering the heat. He'd only said it to taunt him, David knew, but now that bitter feeling was back again, rising up between them. David clenched his jaw and looked away.  
"Right. Because if you were married, this wouldn't be happening. And if we don't have this, we don't have anything." He looked back at Joe. "Is that the joke?" Joe had the good grace to look uncomfortable, but that was as far as he would yield, and David knew it. "Will you lay back." He'd meant it as a request, but his voice was far too strained for it to be anything but a stilted command. But Joe did as he asked, scooting further up on the bed and back onto his elbows. David sat down beside him and twisted the jar open.   
He still remembered how Joe liked to be touched, despite the years between their last encounter. He didn't want anything too clever, didn't have the patience for games or a slow climb. So David didn't waste time building up to anything, simply dipped his hand into the jar and then gripped Joe's dick, working the lubricant over him perfunctorily.  
"Fucking finally," Joe huffed, throwing his head back, and for a moment David gave him what he wanted, pumping him steadily, adjusting his hold and the rhythm of his hand to complement Joe's rolling hips. Then he slackened his grip, slowed his pace. "The hell," Joe gasped, bucking up into his hand. David set his free hand against his hip, pressing him down against the mattress.   
"It's no fun if it ends too soon." He slid his hand up along Joe's side, remembering the last time he'd touched him like this, the choking silence they had been caught up in. If he could have that moment back he would have held on, not just dragged a memorizing hand along Joe's body. He would have fucking begged him to stay.   
"Fun for who?" Joe said, as David leaned in over him, but David knew from the way his eyes were going flat that he felt it too. He wouldn't willingly give a single inch, David would have to wring each concession out of him, a war of attrition. He'd never had the stamina for a prolonged fight, and he sighed inwardly at the thought of how exhausting a life with Joe would be. He firmed his grip as he brought their lips together, so that Joe's mouth fell open against him and David could kiss him however the hell he liked. He didn't understand how Joe could go on about his mouth the way he did, when he was the one with almost obscenely perfect lips, firm enough to bite down on, plump enough to drive all rational thought from a man's head. He had to pull away before the sensation got the better of him, focusing instead on setting a pace that had Joe slowly writhing.   
"I don't care why you didn't marry her," David said, although that was a lie, "Just tell me why I had to hear it from your sister two years later."  
"You fucking serious?" Joe muttered angrily, not looking at David, watching the motion of his hand instead. He was grimacing, most likely considering throwing David off of him and storming out, so David quickened the pace to stave him off. "Shit, fuck."  
"It couldn't have been Barbara," David went on, struggling to keep a conversational tone. "You met her, you knew how it was between the two of us. Was it because I was in New York?" He tracked a hand down Joe's torso, his skin heated and starting to flush, from arousal or anger, or a combination of both. "I would have followed you over here if you had asked me. I think you knew that."  
"Would you shut up," Joe bit out. He was fucking up into David's hand now, and David was letting him, squeezing and twisting to pull staccato grunts from him.  
"It's the war, isn't it?" David knew he sounded anything but casual now, knew all the furious hurt was leaking out in his voice. "You want to forget it, and you can't do that with me." Joe had said it himself, that last day they were together in New York. If that was the reason, and David had a sinking feeling that it must be, then there really wasn't a future for them, of any kind. He wouldn't force those memories on Joe, and he couldn't stand the thought of Joe looking at him and only seeing _that_ , that person he had been. He could see all those other versions of Joe, the person that he was to his family, the grumbling, laughing, spendthrift, talkative thing that he was, and yes, Easy's mercenary and stalwart Liebgott was there too and always would be, but God he was more than that, and David was too, and he wouldn't let either of them be reduced, even if it meant that this was all they would ever have.  
"Fuck's sake, Web." Joe's hands had been curled against the bedspread, but he lifted one now and got a hold of David by his shirt, yanking him against him. David bit down on his shoulder, to hurt him and hide his face, his hand still moving on him, he could tell from Joe's uneven movements that he was close. "You idiot, look at me. David. Would you fucking look at me? Ah, Christ!" His last words were expelled with a punching breath, because David had shifted his mouth over to bite down on the base of his neck the way he remembered Joe enjoying, sucking hard against his skin as he came, pressing a lingering, open-mouthed kiss against the spot as he recovered. Joe was sweating lightly; David wiped his hand against the blanket and then traced his fingers along his damp, warm skin. It wasn't possible to hold a person between two hands, that was the inherent tragedy of loving someone. He felt a press against his eyes, his sternum, and trailed his mouth down Joe's chest to distract himself. "Goddamn it," Joe said, and shoved him away. David expected him to clamber off the bed, but he rolled after him instead, straddling his hips and pushing down against his shoulders with hard hands. "That's not it," he practically snarled, leaning down to glare at David, close enough for their noses to brush. "Are you really this stupid that I gotta spell it out for you?" He gave an angry shove against David's shoulders.  
"Then what?" David snapped back. "You should have written, you should have told me you hadn't gotten married. I thought -"  
"Shut. Up." Joe was stripped of everything but his socks, David still fully clothed beneath him, but he had reclaimed control of the room, of David, with the same rough certainty that he always had. He sat back, and David stayed where he was, sprawled out beneath him. "You're barely thirty, Web."  
"I'm thirty-one."  
"Oh, well, my fucking mistake. Thirty-one. You want a family, right? Kids? You're not getting any of that hanging around me."  
David would want whatever Joe told him he should want, so long as it still involved Joe, but he wasn't admitting that. "I don't know," he said instead.  
"You don't know. The guy doesn't know," Joe scoffed, talking, apparently, to the room. "Well, you better figure it out, because now's the time. You fucked it up with Barb somehow -"  
" -It's Barbara, why do you keep -"  
" -but there's plenty of other women out there who'd probably fucking swoon if you looked twice at them. You should be working that angle. Just keep your mouth shut, let the rest of your face do the talking."  
Was Joe really sitting naked on top of him, giving him advice on finding a girl? "I don't want a wife," he said dismissively, because that at least was true. "That's what you wanted. Why didn't you get married?" Joe huffed and looked away. "You're not that much older than me. You could still have that, if that's what you want." He reached up, curling a hand around Joe's where it was still gripping him by his shoulder. "Tell me what it is you want." Joe stared at him, his mouth twisting. He blinked once, hard, then lowered his head to kiss him. It was soft, almost hesitant, and so unbearably sweet that David almost pulled away, it would have been easier to pull away. Instead he wound his free hand up into Joe's hair and kissed him back, a painful grip on something inside of him slowly easing open, releasing its hold. Joe breathed a soft curse against his mouth, and that was sweet too, and the way he eased himself down against him until they were pressed together along their length gave David that same feeling he had gotten at the aid station, when they had finally deigned to give him a syrette for his leg, and the world had swum as the pain dropped away behind a thick door, and David could have almost sworn that he was slowly rising up through clear water.   
The softness couldn't last, not when they had just begun to reacquaint themselves, an exchange of hand jobs barely serving to take the edge off. Soon enough Joe was biting along his jaw as he struggled to tug David's shirt loose, David pulling Joe tight against him so he could grind their hips together again. Joe gripped him with his knees and rolled them to the side and growled in frustration against David's ear when his shirt got stuck around his wrist. David pressed his mouth against Joe's neck, tracing the scar's borders with his lips. "'All mere complexities,'" he muttered. "'The fury and the mire of human veins.'"  
"Take your fucking pants off, I swear to God," Joe said.

* * *

  
Joe was difficult to wake in the morning, not that David could blame him, seeing how they had hardly slept. He had to stick a cup of coffee practically beneath his nose to get him to lift his head, and coaxed him upright with a cigarette and a danish as his lure. They sat together on the bed and ate a hurried breakfast, and then Joe got up and started collecting his clothing, still bleary-eyed.   
"What time do you get off work?"  
"I'm working late. Friday's are good for raking in a little extra. Hey, when did you start rolling your own?"  
"I don't." He wouldn't mention Grant, not yet at least. "Will you meet me somewhere, afterwards?"  
"Whatever," he said, flippant, sitting back down to put on his shoes. "Where?"  
"Somewhere along the wharf."  
"What, you trying to pick up a sailor? That's the wrong spot for it, babe."  
"Thanks for the tip," David said dryly. "Is that a yes?"  
"Can't get there until after midnight."  
"I don't care."  
"Okay." Joe rattled off the name of a place, then stood. He shifted, running the back of his hand along his mouth in thought, then grabbed David by his hair and looked down at him for a long moment. He leaned in and kissed him, hard and brief. "See you then."   
"Yeah," David said, suddenly giddy. He dropped down onto his side and watched Joe slip out the door, then looked around, letting the grin he'd been fighting against all morning spread across his face. The room reeked of sweat and sex, spunk and saliva. He knew he should get up, start in on the task of making the place more presentable before the hotel maids began their rounds. He had already fended off a curiously craned neck from the server when their breakfast had been delivered. But he reclined against the pillows instead, savoring his coffee and cigarette, basking in it.  
David spent the day out on the water, chartering a boat so late in the morning that the captain didn't make much of an effort to hide his amused condescension. David knew what he saw: an man affluent enough to hire a boat all to himself for a day, and wasteful enough of his time and money to not even set out at a decent hour. It was pointless to take offense at an accurate assumption, so David only grinned and made a joke about having had a little too much fun last night. "I've had a few of those nights myself," the captain replied, and David laughed, surprising the man with his boisterousness.   
And he couldn't wipe the grin off his face, but at least Joe wasn't around to give him hell over it. He grinned as he leaned back in his seat and felt the cool kiss of the water along his arm and shoulders when the boat smacked down against it, he beamed as he made small talk with the captain, _how long have you been in business, what fish do you prefer to catch?_  
"Damn," he said, still grinning, when they eventually anchored and he cast his line so poorly that the man, Russo, huffed a startled laugh, then tried to disguise it as a cough.  
"First time fishing offshore?" He asked, all too casual.  
"Would you believe me if I said it was my second?" David drawled, smiling, God, his jaw was starting to ache from it. Russo made a nothing sound in his throat and talked him through his next cast.   
"So only your second time out on the ocean, then?"  
"I've done some sailing, but fishing is a new interest. I went on a lark with a family friend about a year ago. Cape Cod, have you ever been?"  
"No," Russo answered, perking up in genuine interest. "Heard it's good waters out there."  
"Well, it must be, if I managed to catch something in it." Russo laughed, looking him over with a more friendly expression. He moved to the back of the boat and returned with another rod, standing a few feet away from David to cast his line. They settled into a comfortable quiet, interrupted only by the occasional question from David, the rare word of advice from Russo. He would have to do this more often, David decided. There was something about it, casting a line out into that cerulean expanse, remaining alert enough to tend it, but passive enough to enjoy the lulling motion of the boat, the sharp salt-water smell. He thought about Joe, every bit as impossible and treacherous as the ocean, and grinned again, and almost lost his grip on the rod when it jerked in his hand, the line going suddenly taut.  
"Got something there?" Russo asked, as if there could be any doubt, as the rod bent in, the fish on the other end diving down and away into the water. David didn't answer, readjusting his grip. "Pull up, then reel in the slack. Hoo boy, you got a good-sized one." He clapped David on the shoulder. "Not too bad for a late start."  
"Not bad," David echoed grimly, pulling up on the rod, Christ, what a feeling, to know there was an unseen creature struggling down below him, its strange, gaping mouth snagged by his sharp hook, every muscle and inclination set against him. _Fight all you like_ , he thought to it. _I won't let you go_.  
And it did fight, its will to break free burning along his shoulders, his back, fresh discomfort to add to the ache of hard-used flesh, the twinge of dark bruises that Joe had left peppered along his body. He watched the water's choppy surface, the silver flash of the line, for some hint of what he was hauling incrementally towards him. And when he saw it, just a dark silhouette that twisted furiously against the line and then plunged down and out of sight again, all he was left with was an impression of something sleek, unexpectedly long.   
"You got a shark of some kind," Russo said, only mildly surprised.  
"Is that." David pulled upward on the rod, reeled in desperately. "Is that normal?"  
"It's not so strange," Russo answered.  
When David dragged it in near enough to get a good look, he was surprised by how slender it was, by how it roiled and rolled wildly and then suddenly stopped, turning almost listlessly onto its back to show a creamy white underbelly. Russo grabbed a hooked instrument and used it to shift the shark around so that he could lift it out of the water and into the boat by its caudal fin. It curled up on itself, straining to reach the offending touch, its mouth yawning open, then collapsed back down.  
"This kind's no good to eat," he said bluntly. "We'll have to toss it back, or I can buy it off of you, sell it to a guy I know who deals in bycatch."  
"No," David said, kneeling down to look more closely at the shark. It was dully colored, only remarkable for its streamlined length and its startlingly large eyes, green in the same way an emerald was green, deeply, the color glowing out from somewhere within. It was staring at him, at nothing, something unknowable dredged up from the inceptive depths, still refusing to divulge its secrets. "No," he said again, looking into that eye, a world in itself. "We should let it go."  
It was dark by the time they docked. David shook Russo's hand and thanked him for the experience, and Russo told him he thought he'd make for a capable angler with a little time and practice. _Maybe I'll buy one of my own_ , David thought to himself, as he walked past the boats, their masts jutting up in neat rows, their sails tightly furled. He was only passable at sailing and worse at fishing, but he could improve. After all, he would be living near the ocean now, like he'd always wanted. He could have all those things he wanted.   
He still had hours before Joe would get off work, so he took his time wandering his way towards the bar where they were to meet. The nightlife couldn't compare to New York, but it didn't need to; it had a charm all its own, an amalgamation of color, natural beauty, and a certain aberrant quality to the people who inhabited it. It was no wonder that Grant had chosen to settle here, that Christenson had been so eager to return.   
The bar, David discovered, was in reality more of a fish stand with a small, cave-like interior space behind it where a person could order a drink and a dish of whatever seafood they had available. David had pasta pesto and broiled salmon, and washed it down with table wine, cloyingly sweet. If only his father could see him now, he thought, bitterly pleased, feeling nearly as far removed from the stately Westchester home of his youth as he had during the war. His father had only minimal tolerance for the simpler pleasures; he had visited David's cramped New York apartment just once, and had refused to step foot in it again, and David had counted it a victory. He still took a shamelessly childish joy in shocking the man. But then he thought guiltily of his mother, and the way she had looked at him when he last visited, hurt thinly masked behind a brittle smile, _you do so enjoy pretending to be someone else, Kenyon._   
_It's not an act_ , he thought now, almost believing it. _Kenyon's been dead and gone for more than ten years_. But was anybody ever really gone, when they were remembered well by the living? Yes, he thought, thinking of Hoobler. Yes, they were irretrievably gone.  
"What've you got to pout about?" He looked up to see Joe standing beside him. "Gimme that." He took the empty seat next to David and pulled his plate towards him, helping himself to the scraps. David blinked at him, then glanced at his watch.  
"It's ten o'clock."  
"There's that Harvard education in action." David stared at him, but Joe was resolutely focused on shoveling as much food in his mouth as possible. "Hey Tony, you got anything good back there?"  
"Gelato."  
"I'll take some. This guy's paying." He stuck the last bite of salmon in his mouth, turning to look at David as he chewed. "So?"  
"What?"  
"What was with your face just now? Your lip was coming out and everything."  
"It was not," David said instantly, internally horrified. Joe was most likely lying, but there was no telling with him. He slid the last of his wine over to him, trying for an arch tone. "I just don't like to be kept waiting." He'd never been a very successful flirt, but Joe shot him a pleased half-grin, then rolled his eyes and looked away.  
"I'm here, aren't I?" He said, low, scratched. He cleared his throat as Tony plopped a cup of gelato down in front of him. "Thanks." Then, bumping David's knee with his own, "Settle up, this won't take long."  
After Joe drained David's glass and inhaled his dessert, David paid up and they left together and walked along the wharf. Joe had been verbose at the bar, complaining to both David and Tony about the new freeway construction and the stingy tipping habits of tourists, but he grew quieter as they walked further along the pier, away from the bustle and noise. David felt suddenly exhausted; he'd barely slept at all in the past two days, and if he had it his way he wouldn't waste time on sleep tonight either, but Joe, he assumed, would have work again in the morning. David watched him as they settled side by side on the edge of the pier, David cross-legged, Joe's feet kicked out over the edge. He stared down at the black, breathing water and thought about the previous night, when Joe's head had come down against the top of his spine as he groaned, his hands clutching on to David. How they had stayed like that as they rolled to their sides, still tied up like a knot, and Joe had grumbled that David was too hairy, too sticky. But he hadn't moved, had remained just as he was, his face pressed against the space between David's shoulders, and David had suddenly remembered their first time together, on that narrow mattress in his room at Harvard, and how he had wondered then if Joe would lay so close to him on a wider bed.  
"Hey," he said, leaning away to look at him. He had an urge to take his hand, but knew that would most likely end with Joe pushing him into the bay. Joe leaned away too, returning his look with a raised brow. "I'm going to be in Los Angeles."   
"Yeah," Joe said, his expression making it clear that David was wasting his time, and that he wouldn't put up with it for long. "You said that already."  
"I mean." David stopped, frustrated with his inability to touch him, tell him. "I'm just pointing out, it's a hell of a lot closer than New York was. And I'm not interested in finding a girl. I'm not interested in finding a guy." He clutched his knees, watching Joe's face for some sort of signal, the jut of his nose over his full lips, his dark, impossible eyes. "I'm interested in you and me."  
Joe stared back at him, the moment too long, the silence too thick, and then he huffed a breath and looked away, shaking his head. "You're an idiot," he said. "You're such a fucking sap." He stood up, reaching into his back pocket to pull out his pack. "Come on, let's go to my place." David climbed to his feet like a marionette, all stiff strung limbs, and obediently took the cigarette that Joe held out to him. Joe stepped in close to light it, and David leaned his head down towards him, the flame warm and small between them. "I've never been to L.A.," Joe said, looking at David's cigarette. "Sounds like a fun place."  
If Joe were a girl, if they were in a movie, now would be the moment that David would take him into his arms and dip his head back with a hand along his jaw and kiss him. Instead he sucked too hard on the cigarette and nearly coughed, his chest jumping as he struggled to contain it. "The drive's somewhere around seven hours, I think," he managed to croak out.   
"Yeah, that seems about right," Joe said, grinning as he watched David sputter and heave. "Jesus, David, a guy would think you'd never smoked before or something. Let's get outta here before people start fucking staring." They walked back down the pier, shoulder to shoulder, and people should stare, David thought. If they knew what was happening right now, if they could sense the rising tide of relief and love growing up inside of him they would stop and stare.   
"Seven hours isn't so bad," he said, watching Joe as they walked along. He watched his lip curl up, watched him hastily stick his cigarette into the corner of his mouth in an attempt to halt the motion. He wondered if Joe was thinking about the same things that he was, the hours before a jump or a patrol, the hours separating coasts and continents, the lean allotment of time they had spent together against the heavy weight of time they had spent apart.  
"Seven hours is nothing," Joe said, blowing the words out like smoke, like something released from his chest, and David thought that he must have been.


	4. September, 1961 - Santa Monica, CA

Most of the time it was next to impossible to get through to Joe's apartment, but David started calling early, and kept at it until the line finally cleared.  
"What?" Joe said when he answered the phone, openly annoyed, as if he had known it was him.   
"I'm having dinner with Buck tonight. Thought you might want to come along."  
"Nah, I've got work. Come by the diner after."  
"Why? I doubt I'll have room for another meal," David said dryly.  
"Yeah, you're a real riot. Just be there."   
They hung up and David worked for a few minutes longer on his article before abandoning the effort and pushing away from his desk. He made a restless circuit of the house, then put on his loafers and went out the door, making his way to the beach.   
He hadn't quite managed the ocean front property he had envisioned for himself, but he could smell the sea through his open windows, could hear the tide beating against the shore when he stepped outside. A leisurely walk through his own peaceful, sun-drenched neighborhood was all that separated him from the water. And he had a boat of his own, docked in the nearby marina: his Tusitala. Joe had laughed loud and sharp when David explained the name to him. "What story is it gonna tell?" He had asked derisively. "The one about all the fish you catch and throw back?" _It's telling the only story that matters_ , David had thought at the time, thinking of the world he had glimpsed and set free in that shark's eye, but he didn't try to say any of that to Joe. He would come sailing now and then, lounging beside the tiller and letting David do all the work, but he didn't share David's passion for being out on the ocean, or for fishing.   
The Tusitala had been purchased with the last vestiges of money received from his father before David had been cut off. He hadn't asked anything of his parents since Harvard, but he also had never found it in him to resist what was offered. It was a longstanding conflict, an uneasy game of back and forth that he and his father had been engaged in since before David's enlistment, but it came to an abrupt end when his father caught wind of Joe.   
"You've done it now, Kenyon," Anne had said to him, when she called him up shortly after everything had imploded. "We all like to horrify father, but really, couldn't you have been a little more discreet?"  
"John made an assumption, like he often does," David drawled, leaning against the counter and telling himself that he wasn't tired, that he couldn't possibly be so effected by his family's histrionics. "He was bound to get one of them right eventually."  
"It's bad enough to take up with a man," Anne continued on, as if he hadn't spoken, "but a Jew, Kenyon? What did you think would happen?"  
"Goodbye, Anne," David said, and hung up the phone.   
They hadn't entirely cast him out. His mother wrote him regularly, John and Anne called often to gossip and keep him informed on how the old crowd was getting on, and David still made an annual journey home on the holidays, where his presence was stiffly tolerated by his father. But the incessant attempts to convince him to move back to New York, to find a more lucrative career, came to an immediate end, and so did his father's generosity. David had spent the next several days in a cold fury, longing to strike out at something but lacking a target. It wasn't the money; he had been trying to extricate himself from that hold for years. It was the fact that his father believed that the money meant anything at all to him, that he believed David would consider throwing Joe over for it, as if he were still a child and Joe a silly bauble that David had been playing with long past the appropriate age. He had indulged in several fantasies of what he might do to pay his family back in kind, but they all involved wild declarations that Joe would never agree to, so in the end David had merely emptied his accounts of the last of his father's money and used it to purchase the Tusitala.  
When he neared the sand, he slipped out of his shoes and carried them loosely in one hand as he crossed the beach, stopping when he reached the surf. There was nothing quite like the feeling of standing at the oceans's edge, the known world at his back, the vast, hidden womb of the earth before him, and David somehow existing in neither of them. He was fucking tired of it. It was amusing, if something painful and long-dreaded could ever truly be amusing, to think that he had this view at his fingertips, had the career and independent life that he had been working towards for more than ten years, all while he stood by and watched the rest of it go out with the tide.   
He was clenching his jaw again, he realized belatedly. He forced it loose, rubbing the lingering ache with his free hand. If he was half the writer he had always hoped to be, there would be something worth transcribing in the realization that had been growing in him, ignored and then reluctantly acknowledged, over the past several months. Humans liked to imagine their lives as a series of momentous decisions, with one path chosen and the rest rejected, markers they could look back on and say, _that's the moment I chose him_ , or, _this is the day I understood that there is no reconciling with war_. But the truth was, every day was another crossroads, and every day you had to choose, and choose again, and again. David didn't know how much longer he could continue. He sighed and turned away. His editor was expecting a completed article this afternoon, and he had barely begun.  
That evening he knocked on Buck's door, and Buck swung it open immediately and ushered David inside with a wide smile and an arm around his shoulder. David knew the opinion of some of the men of Easy, that taking a bullet and losing so many of his friends to death or crippling wounds had left Buck a different man, almost unrecognizable. But no good man could come through the war unaltered. And he seemed largely the same to David, but perhaps that was just time, or the fact that David had never had to watch him slip apart in the first place.  
Whatever he had been like in his darkest moments, he was contentedly jovial now, leading David towards the dining room while he asked how his work was coming along, how the drive into the city had been. Fine on both fronts, David assured him, and greeted his wife and their two girls when he entered and found them settling into their seats. This wasn't the first dinner he had enjoyed at Buck's home; they hadn't been particularly close during the war, but they had both belonged to Easy, so it was ridiculous to imagine that they might live in the same city and not take the time to look in on each other now and then.  
David was more than a little envious of Buck, but who wouldn't be? The man was still startlingly handsome, for one thing, his eyes that same glowing blue, and just as fit and healthy as he had been nearly twenty years prior. He was a rising star in the district attorney's office, lived in a beautiful home in a coveted part of the city, and had a lovely family to share it with. David discussed literature with Buck's eldest daughter and politics with his youngest, and wondered if it was too late for Joe, if David had robbed him of something irreplaceable. He would have been a good father.   
Joe had moved to Los Angeles roughly two years after David. At the time, David had thought it the mark of a turning point in their relationship, an affirmation in deed if not in words that their lives were slowly pulling together. No more abbreviated phone calls where they had to speak so circumspectly that they may as well be cold war spies. No more lengthy letters, on David's part at least, composed over the course of days and mailed north with a frequency that rivaled those first three years that he had written Joe, only half understanding that he was punch-drunk in love. No more long trips back and forth on weekends, invariably spent in bed, because that was how they understood each other best, and they didn't have time for anything else. Those final distances were closing.  
But that wasn't how it had turned out. Joe flatly refused to live with David, renting an apartment in the city instead. He had a job at a diner and worked inconveniently long hours, and they usually only managed to see each other once or twice a week. And it had gone on like that for six years. David knew he should be grateful for what he had, and he was, or he had been at least, but over the last few years those feelings had started to sour, rich wine to vinegar. If this was the culmination of what they could have together, if their relationship could only exist in clandestine snatches occurring between their real lives, then what did they have, really?   
And Joe wasn't happy, not that he would ever admit that to David, because that would require that they actually talk to each other about this circling drain of a relationship, dizzyingly thrilling when they were together, permanently teetering on the edge of a collapse. David sometimes wished that Joe had stayed in San Francisco; at least there he had his friends, his sprawling, wonderful family. Here he only had David.  
"How's Joe doing?" Buck asked him after dinner, as they stood outside on his small porch enjoying a few fingers of superb whiskey.   
"Oh, you know Joe," David answered, smiling with what he hoped showed only fond amusement and none of that internally crumbling wall. He sometimes wondered if Buck knew, but most likely he just assumed, as the rest of Easy seemed to, that he and Joe had simply continued their wartime friendship. "Talking loud and working hard." Buck laughed.  
"It's funny, looking back."  
"What's that?"  
"I don't know." Buck leaned against his porch post and David copied him, propping his arm against the warm wood. "I often wondered what portion of how we behaved over there was our actual character, and what was simple bravado, or a prop of some sort that we leaned on to get us through. Don always going on about getting himself a Luger, Nixon and his Vat 69." He gestured at David with his glass. "You and Harvard."  
"Did I really talk about Harvard so much?" David asked with a rueful laugh.  
"No, not really," Buck answered. "It was just clear what it meant to you. And Liebgott, I honestly thought it was largely a show, all his talk. But when he turned up at the reunion last year, and I could hear his loud mouth from all the way across the room," he paused, grinning and shaking his head. "I have to admit, it was a good feeling, to know that he really is that damn talkative." He fixed David with his too-bright eyes, leaning across the steps to clap him on the shoulder. "You did a good thing, bringing him along with you."  
"Yes," David said, looking down, embarrassed. "Well. No one forces Joe to do anything, and I'm certainly no exception." But all Buck gave in answer to that was a loud laugh.  
That had been a good day, David thought, as he said his goodbyes to Buck and got into his car. Perhaps the single most satisfying day of his life; the day he walked into the hotel convention center and saw Joe surrounded by Easy men, shoving and shouting to be heard over the din of their voices. If he noticed David he didn't show it; they had agreed to arrive separately from each other, had even gone so far as to stay in different hotels, but David didn't mind the lack of acknowledgement. How could he mind, when Joe was grinning like that? Joe had always belonged to Easy in a way that he had not; David was extraneous to the the exuberant reunion occurring before him, and happily so.   
"You son of a bitch."   
He had been smiling, far too soft and love-struck most likely, but it fell away when someone spoke nearby. He turned to see Bill, walking towards him with his hobbled gate, his false leg sweeping out stiffly with each step. His teeth were bared in an expression that could mean any number of things.   
"Hey, Bill," David said cautiously.  
"You son of a bitch," Guarnere said again, closing in on him. David was still fighting against the urge to step back, retreat from the fierce force of nature that was Bill Guarnere, when Bill got a hold of him, grabbing him roughly by the back of his neck and knocking their heads together. "I knew you fucking knew where he was," he said, and he wasn't angry, he was laughing, that hard, machine-gun laugh. "You cagey bastard, you oughtta take up cards, you keep 'em so close to your goddamn chest."  
"No," David protested, stuttering weakly, "No, I-"  
"Don't you try a line with me," Bill cut him off. "Hey, you don't gotta explain nothing. I'm just glad you got him here." He threw his arm around David's shoulder, dragging him down into a something between a choke hold and a rough embrace, and David stopped resisting and let Bill jostle him around. "This'll be one for the books, eh?"  
"They all are," David said. "Each and every one," and Bill had grinned tight and sharp in response.  
So maybe things were ending between them. Maybe Joe was growing tired of him, tired of Los Angeles, maybe David had been keeping him from the life he'd always imagined for himself, the pillowy soft wife and the crowd of children. But David didn't regret it; it hadn't been a mistake. Joe had found his way back to Easy, and that was a family unto itself. He supposed that should be enough to give him a sense of equilibrium, help him accept what was coming. But he wasn't a fucking martyr, and when he walked into the diner, and Joe poked his head through the window and gestured David to the counter with an imperious tilt of his chin, the surge of furious love that shot through him was enough to have his teeth clamping together, his fingers curling against his palms. He didn't want to let go.   
"Hello, handsome," Edith said, when David slid into his customary seat at the counter. "Are you under the weather? You look tired." She was a handful of years younger than David, but mothered him as if he were one of her children, to Joe's endless amusement.   
"Oh, no," David assured her, summoning up a smile. "I'm fine." The kitchen door swung open and Joe appeared, coming to stand beside Edith. "Hey, Lieb."  
"You want a milkshake?" Joe asked, skipping past the pleasantries. "Ed, make him a shake."  
"Sure," Edith said easily. "What flavor do you want, hon?"  
"You haven't figured it out yet?" Joe said before David could speak. He was watching David with that antagonizing smirk of his. "Look at the guy. He's vanilla." Edith snorted, then quirked a brow at David for confirmation.  
"I do like vanilla," he admitted, with a more honest grin.  
"Coming right up," Edith said, pushing away from the counter.   
"Don't forget that cherry," Joe called after her, giving David one of his false winks, the lip curling up, the twitching eye. He propped both of his arms on the counter, leaning in towards him. "What's up? Is Buck alright?"  
"Buck?" David said, surprised. "He's fine."  
"What's the problem then?"  
"I don't know what you mean." Joe stared at him for a long moment, and David stared back, trying not to glare.  
"Okay," he finally said, looking away with a soft snort. "Whatever you say, Web."   
"How has your day been?" David asked, changing the subject gracelessly. Joe shot him a quick, hard look, but went along with it, settling against the counter.  
"Well, you know how much I love standing in front of a stove and flipping greasy burgers for a bunch of bums." He scowled down at the space between their bodies, tapping his finger on the counter next to David's hand. "But whatever."  
"You should look for something else," David said quietly, not for the first time. "Maybe in Santa Monica."  
"Right, but then who would keep Ed in line?" Joe said, lifting his voice to a more normal level as Edith returned with David's milkshake. Joe snatched it and took a lengthy slurp before handing it over to him.  
"Remind me which one of you likes vanilla?" Edith said with a laugh as she walked away.  
"I do," Joe answered, low-voiced, sending David a slick grin from the corner of his mouth. David felt that black weight lift away; Joe still had that effect on him, sending him careening back and forth between moods like a spun top. He grinned back, bumped his knuckles lightly against the side of Joe's hand.   
They talked for a few minutes, Edith circumspectly wiping down empty table tops and chatting with the handful of diners while Joe drank the lion's share of David's milkshake. David told him about dinner with Buck, about how he had spent his day, and Joe rolled his eyes and commented loudly on the ridiculous pastimes that some people managed to pass off as work. He filled up the rest of their conversation with an excruciatingly long description of a television program he had watched the night before. David stopped paying attention, listening to his voice instead, folding his arms and watching Joe gesticulate forcefully as he walked David through the plot. He would have gone on longer, as David knew all too well, but the door opened and a gaggle of youth walked in.  
"Beautiful," Joe said, eyeing them in annoyance. "These kids. What kinda guy brings his date to a place like this?"  
"One with limited options." David watched with Joe as the new patrons paired off and spread themselves out across three different booths. "Where did you take your dates, when you were that age?"  
"Like I had time for that shit," Joe said dismissively, and the hard, reflective quality of his eyes made it clear he wasn't just evading the question. It reminded David again of how vastly different their formative years had been. David's family had been well insulated against the financial perils of those days; his only exposure had come from his father's grim comments across the breakfast table as he read the paper, the murmur of his mother's voice as she gossiped with her friends about that upstart family that invested badly and lost everything, and _really, it's for the best you know, they never did quite fit, did they?_ Joe, meanwhile, had dropped out of school and taken jobs where he could find them to help his family, and had continued on in that vein until his enlistment. _A different world for us both_ , David thought, watching him. _Where will the next thirty years see us_?   
"I should go," he said, rising from his seat. "I'll see you Friday?"  
"Yeah, about that." Joe straightened from his slouch. He fiddled with his ear, searching for an absent cigarette. "I've been meaning to tell you, I'm heading back home on Thursday."  
"Oh?" Spun again.  
"Just for a week. Judy's set to pop, and Carl and Klara want to throw some kind of party for her. I told them I wouldn't miss it."  
"Well then." It was ridiculous to feel slighted, particularly when Joe's devotion to his family was one of David's favorite things about him. "I'll see you when you get back." He smiled stiffly and backed away from the counter. "Tell everyone I said hello."  
"Yeah." Joe was watching him with an inscrutable expression. "See you."  
_I love you_. It would be comical, if he said it. Comical to see all the shocked expressions on the faces of strangers, comical because Joe would not say it back. Maybe in another thirty years a different fool would say those words to a similarly impossible man, and no one would bat an eye, and those two men would go home together, a life shared. But David didn't say anything, of course, and he wondered as he drove home if this trip would be the one where Joe decided he wouldn't be coming back.  
He spent the next few days resolutely writing. His work in Los Angeles was a vastly different creature from the type of articles he had become accustomed to producing when in New York. Time demands were always a heavy factor, but the Journal had left him with more space to maneuver than he was allowed with the Valley Green Sheet. David received a daily call from his editor, who didn't seem aware that there were other ways to be heard aside from with a shout, and often accused David of stonewalling, of all the ridiculous things. But it gave him something to focus on.   
By Thursday he had finished the article that his editor had been haranguing him for, and was debating whether or not he should start on his next assignment, or give himself the day off and take the Tusitala out, when his door suddenly opened behind him. David turned in his seat, startled, and watched in astonishment as Joe stepped into the house, his pack slung over his shoulder.  
"Whoa, you're actually working," he said, coming up behind David and leaning over his shoulder to look at the typewriter. "The end of the railway," he read, deadpan, then snorted. "Who the fuck cares?"  
"I care," David said. "Plenty of people care. Those companies were convicted of conspiracy, but we still let them dismantle our streetcar lines. Why are you here?"  
"Breathe, bärchen. Jesus, the shit you get worked up over." Joe's hand found the neck of David's shirt, his fingers flipping the buttons loose. "I'm staying here for a few days. Got a problem with it?" His smirk made it clear he already knew the answer.  
"No." David checked quickly to make sure that the curtains were closed, then wrapped an arm around Joe's waist. "Of course not. But I thought -"  
"They can wait. The party's not 'til Sunday, I'll head up Saturday night." Joe dropped his pack to the floor beside the desk, then got back to opening David's shirt. He had a frankly flattering fascination with undressing David, a way of watching his own hands with a scowling frown, as if he were flummoxed by what he had caught them doing. "Anyways, I've been thinking about fucking you all week."  
"All week?" David said, trying not to grin. "I don't know if I'm up for that, Lieb. We're not kids anymore." Joe gave one of his loud, cracking laughs.  
"You afraid of throwing your back out? I'll go easy on you." He pulled David's shirt off his shoulders, then gave him a shove. "Get your ass on that bed."  
"What do we need that for?" David asked, tugging Joe into his lap, the chair scraping loud against the floor as he pushed it back and away from the desk. Joe slid in against him, and David put his hands on his waist to bring him closer, and God, to be so familiar with the body of another, to have moved alongside it in so many intimate moments that it was almost a well rehearsed performance, the way Joe dug his fingers in and pulled roughly on the hairs of his chest, the way David ran his hands up Joe's side and then hooked them around the back of his neck to guide his head down. But it wasn't a performance; it was an honesty that David had never given to anyone else, that he had never received from anyone else but Joe.  
"Now who's acting like a kid," Joe said against his mouth.  
Joe wanted to eat in bed, but David's spirits were too high to be contained to a room, buoyed up as he was by an almost euphoric gratitude, so he grabbed a bottle of wine from the cupboard and hovered over Joe's shoulder as he threw sandwiches together, until Joe got annoyed with him, elbowing him hard in the sternum with a, "Stop breathing down my fucking neck, David, Jesus!" They walked together to the beach and settled down into the soft, moist sand just as the sun started to set, and it would be romantic, David supposed, if only they had remembered the wine glasses and weren't reduced to passing the bottle back and forth between each other, and if Joe would stop complaining about how he was eating more sand than sandwich.  
"Let's go sailing tomorrow," David said, and Joe groaned and flopped back in the sand.  
"No," he said, throwing one arm over his head and using the other to balance the wine bottle against his stomach. His shirt was on, but unbuttoned and gaping open, and David didn't know precisely when Joe's spare length had become the embodiment of all carnal desire, but time and age had not lessened its effect on him. "What's with you and that boat? Whole fucking ocean's right here in front of you, but you're not happy unless you can drown in it. Or else you're trying to catch some goddamn shark so you can gawk like an idiot and then throw it back."  
"You should give it another chance." David glanced surreptitiously to either side, then ran the palm of his hand up Joe's hip and along his stomach before taking the bottle from him. Joe twitched and gave a low, startled grunt.  
"Once was enough," he said, glaring, his teeth coming down on the inner edge of his bottom lip, an invitation for David to try it again, if he dared. They weren't alone on the beach, but they were close to it, and everyone else was watching the sunset, the foaming, chanting surf. "Why do you fuck around with those things? I hope you get bit."  
"I've dealt with more difficult creatures," David said dryly, reaching out again, but this time Joe was ready for him, knocking his hand away roughly.   
"It's not a fucking joke, Web. Swear to God, it's like you want something bad to happen."  
"Of course I don't," David said swiftly, surprised by Joe's sudden vehemence. "I'm careful. I don't do anything unprepared."  
"Why do it at all?" Joe muttered, sitting back up and turning his attention to the sunset, hunched shoulders and a curled spine. David stared at his back, biting down on the inside of his cheek to stop himself from saying something precipitous, _what does it matter, what would it change, you're leaving and I have to let you and that's the whole damn point_. He recorked the half-finished bottle and started gathering up their belongings.  
"Want to head back?" He asked coldly.  
"Yeah," Joe said after a moment. He stood up, and David followed behind him as they retraced their steps back to the house. Inside, Joe turned on him, moving in until he had David pressed up against the door, fixing him with a hard, flat stare. "Listen," he said, and then stopped, his mouth twisting down.  
"What?" David asked, thick-tongued, his heart hammering with dread. But Joe just huffed and set his hands on his hips, his thumbs stroking down in a circular motion against the bone.  
"We'll go on Saturday, okay? Before I head out."  
"Okay," David agreed numbly. He almost wished Joe had just said it. He was exhausted from waiting on the blow. Joe leaned in, his nose brushing against David's collarbone, his mouth warm and soft, and David closed his eyes and pulled him closer.  
"I'm not fucking fishing," Joe scraped, "so you can forget that right now."  
"I need you," David said, and Joe muttered his name and ran angry hands along his arms and shoulders, then pulled him to the bedroom.  
They didn't leave the house at all the next day, lounging in bed past noon with their separate books, David with the latest Steinbeck, Joe with the latest potboiler that he'd picked up God-only-knew-where-or-why. When they finally got up, it was only to resettle in the front room, Joe folding into place in front of the record player, smoking and, he claimed, organizing the shit show that was David's record collection.  
"You mean your collection," David drawled from the couch. "I haven't contributed a thing to it." Joe, meanwhile, added to it often.  
"Keep it that way," Joe said with a grunt, standing up to put a new record on. "I've put too much money into building this thing up right. You'd just ruin it with something stupid." He dropped the needle down, an electric guitar rolling out far too loud, and Joe nodded along to the music as he wandered away, and David rolled his eyes and waited until he left the room to get up and turn the volume down. He returned to the couch and his book, and didn't notice Joe's absence until the record ended, the silence pulling him back. He got back up and turned the record player off, then went looking for Joe.  
He found him back in the bedroom, standing in front of David's dresser. He turned around when David walked in, grinning crookedly. "You know, you're supposed to hide dirty magazines and shit in your underwear drawer. This," and he raised his hand, waving its contents triumphantly, "this is just pathetic, sweetheart."  
"Sorry to disappoint," David said, trying to hide his embarrassment. He moved to stand beside Joe, looking down at the postcard, a more precious possession to David than any jump star or medal, and at the photo that he had clipped to it, gifted to him by Popeye at Easy's last reunion.  
"You steal this?" Joe asked, flicking the picture.  
"No," David said, as if the very idea were abhorrent, although the truth was he had been thinking about how he might steal it, or at least ask for a copy without giving away how intensely he wanted it, when Popeye had nudged him with his elbow and told him he could have it if he liked.  
It was a photo of Joe, of course, although he wasn't the only figure captured in the image. He was sitting between Popeye and Grant, the three of them picked out in stark black and white against the snowy background and the dark of their coats. They were looking at the camera, Popeye smiling, Grant neutrally stone-eyed, but Joe was scowling, his mouth half-open, letting it be known, David was sure, that he resented having his photo taken. It was so intrinsically Joe, a summation of all the best parts of him, during the war and beyond, never really pleased but always _there_ , unfaltering and in the thick of it, that David had stood and stared for far too long when he happened to come across it, flipping through Popeye's collection of pictures. Looking at it now, he was struck again by how young Joe looked, his face clear and unlined, only twisted by his expression. He had managed it, David realized, his chest suddenly aching. He had become so accustomed to Joe's presence in his life that he was startled by this interloper from the past, this young man scowling out at him. He glanced over at Joe, the deepening creases above his brow and around his eyes that somehow only served to add interest to a face that had never been classically attractive, but always striking, clever and complex.  
"What, like you don't look different," he sneered, catching David's appraising stare.   
"You've only gotten better, liebling," David said, meaning every overly sentimental word. Joe grinned, sharp and toothy.  
"Yeah, but you sure as shit haven't gotten any smarter." He set the postcard and photo on top of the dresser, and reeled David in by his collar.   
"You don't have to go through all this bother," David said that evening, watching Joe root through his cupboards for ingredients. He had thought they might go out for dinner, but when he had mentioned feeling hungry Joe had promptly rolled out of bed, making his way to the kitchen. "I know you don't like to cook."  
"What the hell are you talking about?" Joe said, throwing David an affronted look. He returned to inspecting a loaf of bread with a critical eye. "I like it okay. I just don't like cooking at that fucking diner. You got any paprika?" David opened the drawer containing his limited collection of spices and slid the small container across the counter to him. "Nice. Slice up those onions, we're making a stew."  
Joe had cooked for him before, but only rarely, and each time David was surprised by how enjoyable the meal turned out to be. This most recent effort was no exception, a sweetly peppery beef stew redolent in onion, and rye bread to soak up any remaining broth. They ate outside on David's small patio, and afterwards David shifted his chair around beside Joe's so they could more easily share a cigarette. He was still trying to quit, and Joe was no help.  
"You ever think about that day in Austria?" Joe asked suddenly, breaking what David had thought to be a rare, contented quiet.  
"What day?" Joe slid him an annoyed glance out of the side of his eye, and David realized with a start what he was referring to. "Oh." He looked down at the cigarette, trying to settle his scrambling thoughts, nearly as lost for words now as he had felt then. "Yes, I think about it." It still surprised him, when Joe initiated these conversations. It didn't happen often, but going to the Easy reunion seemed to have unlocked something in him, and he and David had discussed the war more in the past year and a half than they had the entirety of the preceding fifteen years. But David had never imagined that Joe would mention that particular day.  
"I don't regret it," Joe said quickly, harshly, as if it were paramount that David know that he was still in the wrong. "If I had him here in front of me right now, I'd shoot him again, and sleep fine tonight." He glared a challenge at David, but David didn't answer except to grit his teeth. "I'd do a better job of it, though, I'll tell you that. Wouldn't botch it like I did then." He snatched the cigarette and leaned back in his seat, propping his feet up on the table in a show of carelessness. They must be growing more even-tempered with age, David thought, because he wanted to stand up, stalk into the house and close the door behind him, but he didn't, and Joe didn't pick at him to push him to it as he would have before. Instead David watched him inhale the remainder of the cigarette, then stub it out on his plate. "But I don't give a shit about that either. He deserved to bleed. You know what I give a shit about?" He looked over at David, waited expectantly for him to respond.  
"No," David said stiffly. "What?"  
"The way you wouldn't even fucking look at me afterwards. Like you hated me." Joe was watching him with that flat, dark gaze of his, those eyes that didn't show anything that he might hope for or need.  
"Well," David said after a long moment, not looking away "I did hate you. Or I wanted to." He stared at Joe, remembering how he'd shoved his face in close as they argued outside the cottage. How beautiful the day had been, how the sound of the shot had jolted through his body. How he had trembled. "If I had been a better person, I would have stopped you somehow. But I let it happen. So what's the difference between us, really?"  
"There's plenty difference," Joe said gruffly. He kicked his legs down, rolled to his feet. "Don't fucking kid yourself that they're the same." He stomped into the house.  
Maybe they hadn't changed so much after all, David thought darkly as he forced his hands loose from where they had been gripping his own legs. Joe could still infuriate him like no other, and why, what had he expected? Would he have preferred a lie, some platitude about the nature of war and what it did to a man? No, they both had to live with what they had done, and what they hadn't done. David sat for a moment longer, listening to the faint sound of the waves beating against the shore, and then gathered up the plates and went inside.  
Joe was laying on his side, the jut of his shoulder set at a warning when David joined him on the bed. But he didn't struggle or shove David off when he wrapped his arm around him and pulled him back against his chest. David kissed his jaw and behind his ear, murmuring his name, and Joe huffed a breath and allowed it, and in the morning they had put the whole exchange behind them.  
They drove to the marina early, but not as early as they should, because neither of them had grown with time into the sort of person who easily left the comfort of a clean, soft bed, or the invitation of a warm body loosened by sleep into languorous willingness. Joe drove with the windows open and his arm slung across the back of the seat, his fingers running along the nape of David's neck.  
"You need a haircut," he said, curling his hand up into David's hair and giving a practiced, measuring tug.  
"It's fine," David said dismissively.   
"Like fuck it is. I'm not being seen with some scruffy looking beatnik wannabe." He gave one last disgruntled pull, then removed his hand. "I'll fix it up when I get back."  
When he got back. David turned his head to look at him. It felt, this morning at least, as if he would be coming back, as if there could be no doubt. What if he continued to come back, what if every day could be as good as the past few had been? They'd had their disagreements, of course, but that was to be expected. They agreed on very little, and David liked it that way. There was no one else like Joe, no one half as interesting or exasperating.  
"Let's never leave California," he said, following a rash feeling.  
"What?"  
"We shouldn't go too far, wherever we end up. I like the West Coast." They never talked in 'we', it gave David an almost sickening thrill to do so now.   
"Why, you planning on going somewhere?" Joe said with a smirk, but David picked up the note of unease in his voice.   
"Where would you want to live, if we could live anywhere?"  
"What the fuck are you blathering about?" Joe said, then shrugged uncomfortably. "I don't know. Any place I guess, as long as it's not too cold."  
"You wouldn't want to move back to San Francisco?"  
"No," Joe said quickly, too quickly. "That wouldn't." He glanced at David and then away, slouching down in his seat as if embarrassed and giving a loud, annoyed huff. "You're not in San Francisco, so why would I be? I know too many people up there for it to work out, anyway."  
Why did they continue to fight against themselves? Was there really so little confidence between them that they still felt compelled to hold those words back, that _I want to be where you are_ still felt like an admission of weakness? He waited to speak until Joe pulled the car to a stop in front of the marina. "Joe." He turned to look at him, already annoyed, his brow and lip quirked expectantly. David thought about taking his hand, cupping his cheek, but they never touched each other like that unless they were falling into bed together, and certainly never in such a public setting. "I want you to move in with me, when you get back from San Francisco. I want us to live together." They had talked about it before, but only obliquely, David dropping a circumspect comment and Joe turning it away with a quick joke or a hard word. Now Joe stared at him, his mouth twisting down in a way that made it clear that David had surprised him.  
"No," he said, after a moment. "Don't be stupid." He looked away, turning the engine off and pushing his door open. "Let's go, grab your shit."  
_Don't_ , David told himself, as he opened the back door to retrieve his gear. He thought again, desperately, of catching that first shark, of what portion of any creature could be controlled or kept. But he had been deceiving himself, he realized with a sudden terrible clarity. He wasn't on the boat; he was thrashing below it in the dark. The ocean was so blue today that the line where the sky met the water was nearly invisible; David stared fixedly at that distant horizon as he walked down the dock towards the Tusitala, to freedom, Joe trailing behind. He was the caught creature; letting go had never been an option, only fighting free. _Don't_ , he told himself again, even as he stepped onto the boat, turning around to prevent Joe from following after him. The marina was empty; they were as alone as David could hope for.  
"Lieb," he said, but his voice came out choked and he had to stop. Joe stood on the dock, less than a foot of water and the gaps between hearts and lives separating them, and it couldn't be crossed, neither of them had ever managed to cross it. "I think we've gone as far as we can."  
"Huh?" Joe said, blank, staring at him as if he were speaking gibberish.  
"Fortunately there's isn't much overlap in our lives," and David was fucking proud of the fact that he didn't sound bitter at all as he said _that_ , "aside from Easy, of course, but I don't think I'll be overly missed at the reunions. Besides, I prefer to write the few that I'm close to."  
"David," Joe said, and he sounded stunned, and God, David hadn't expected him to let it happen easily, but he hadn't thought he would act so blindsided, either. "What the hell are you talking about?"  
"You should think about moving back to San Francisco." He watched Joe's eyes change, the quick flare of surprised understanding, the barring of the door.  
"Are you kidding me?" He stepped back, and then forward. "Because I said I wouldn't move in with you just now? Jesus Christ. You're a goddamn idiot if you think I'm gonna let you -"  
"Yes, because you won't move in with me," David cut in. "Because it's been six fucking years and you still won't even consider-"  
"So I won't live with you, so you're done, that's what you're saying." Joe was blinking, his hand twitching up towards his hair, and David realized with a sinking feeling that he really hadn't expected this.   
"That's part of it," he said, forcing himself to speak coolly, to not backpedal.  
"Fucking Christ, there's more?" Joe spat. "Beautiful. Let's hear it, let's hear what else you've been holding out on me."  
"Well, you hate it here, for one. Don't try to lie," he said quickly, when Joe opened his mouth to speak. "You hate your job, you hate L.A., you hate your apartment that you refuse to move out of -"  
"Right, like you love it here," Joe snarled.  
"I do-"  
"Now who's lying? You don't like your job or this city any more than I do. You just love the fucking ocean, and this goddamn boat." And he shoved his foot down hard against the prow of the Tusitala, so that it dipped into the water and then rocked unsteadily, forcing David to throw a hand out, catching on to the jib for balance. "Tell you what, Web, you're not gonna find it out there, whatever the hell you're looking for, but happy fucking sailing."  
"I'm not looking for anything, what are you-"  
"Yeah, try it on someone else. Teller of tales, right? You'll keep hacking out shit you get told to write for a place that doesn't mean a damn thing to you, just so long as you can sail away from it all whenever you get too bored, go chasing after some life changing experience or whatever the fuck."   
"You want to know what I'm looking for?" David bit out, and then stopped, his mind suddenly blank. Joe stared intently at him, as if he was actually waiting to hear the answer, but David couldn't fucking _think_ , could only stand there in silence, his mouth opening and closing uselessly. Joe's lip curled up in a mocking smile.  
"You don't know," he said, low and triumphant.  
"Fuck you, Joe." He turned away, started securing his gear with unsteady hands.  
"David." Joe's voice was hard. "Get the hell off that boat." David gave a cold laugh.  
"No. How much clearer could it possibly be? You know I'm right." He looked at him, tried to speak evenly through his stiff jaw and the tangle of his throat. "Neither of us are happy, or getting what we really need from each other."  
"When the hell did I say I wasn't getting what I needed?" Joe said, and then, before David could respond. "You said you're careful. Seems like shaking so bad you can't tie a line is a pretty fucking clear sign that you shouldn't be sailing."  
"I'll be fine," David said tightly.   
"Yeah? I guess you're gonna go out and try and catch some goddamn man-eater too, huh? Have yourself a real good time. Get off the fucking boat." His voice suddenly changed, dropping lower, strained with urgency. "Your head's not straight."  
"Oh, my head's precisely where it should be."  
"Right, stuck straight up your ass."   
He wasn't going to leave. David would have to sail out with Joe standing at the edge of the dock, most likely yelling invectives after him until he was out of sight. The sound of a car pulling to a stop caught his ear, and David looked over to see a family piling out, a couple and their three children. The parents started pulling supplies out of the trunk while the children danced excitedly around them, their voices piping and bright. He looked at Joe, his chest seeming too full, no space remaining for blood or breath. Joe was looking back at him, his cheek twitching, his eyes flat.   
"Don't do this," he said, his quiet scratch of a voice. His hand came up, he raked it through his hair jerkily. "Look, I'll. I'll move in with you, okay? Whatever you want." He looked away for a moment, towards the family that was now making their way down the dock towards them. "Just. Just get off the boat."   
Joe was a lightning flash, a turbulent sea, and David didn't want him any other way. To have him standing in front of him with trembling limbs and an expression close to breaking was wrong, to know that he was causing it was enough to shatter all of David's cold fury like the thin ice it was. David pressed the heels of his hands hard against his eyes. "I can't force you to want what I want, Joe. And I can't keep doing this."  
"I want it, you idiot. Why the hell would you think." Joe cut himself off, wary of the family cheerfully boarding their boat some thirty feet away. "It's just not smart."  
This from a man who had jumped into German occupied France in the black of night, while the sky itself seemed to burn around them. David almost laughed, but he felt too mad at the moment to trust himself to stop. "Where would we live?" He said instead. "None of this changes the fact that you hate living here." He suspected that he sounded like a petulant child, but it couldn't be helped.  
"Jesus Christ, are you seriously going to stand there like some over-sized goddamn figurehead and make me spin a fucking story for you about how great it's all gonna be?" Joe was getting loud again, having clearly run through what little store of patience he had. "I don't know. So let's," he threw up a hand, "you know, talk about it." David didn't know what was wrong with him, why it seemed impossible to leave the boat and rejoin Joe. "I swear to fucking God," Joe grated out, when David continued to stand unmoving. He glanced back at the family, then stepped closer, so that the toes of his shoes were lined up against the edge of the dock, his body leaning forward across the water. "Look," he growled, "I love you, and you fucking know it, so would you quit being so damn dramatic?"  
David did know it. What he hadn't known until this moment was how he had needed to hear it, how it somehow made the rest more bearable. "I love you too, Lieb," he said, his voice shaking.  
"Yeah, idiot, I know." But something in his face softened, the door in his eyes unbarring. "Hey. Come up with me to San Francisco."  
"Really?"  
"It's a long drive, right? Should give you plenty of time to run me through your list of demands." His lip jerked up in an attempt at a smirk, crooked and hesitant.  
"Your family won't mind?"  
"My family fucking loves you, David, don't act stupid." Joe's hand lifted, and then fell. "We'll figure it out, okay?"  
And really, what was out there, in all that unmastered expanse, those fathomless depths, that could rival Joe? Nothing, not a damn thing. David stood for a moment longer, feeling the gentle rock of the boat beneath him, the way the world softly shifted with the breathing ebb and flow of the water. Then he crossed it, a step between worlds, the shadow of the feeling of jumping, and came to stand beside Joe on more solid earth.


	5. December, 1970 - San Bernardino, CA

There wasn't a worse way to wake up than freezing cold, and Joe didn't plan on ever moving his opinion on that. What a fucking miserable feeling, to have your own damn body shake you out of evil dreams because your bones were next to cracking from it, your teeth chattering no matter how you grit your jaw. To wake up huddled in a dark hole, pressed as close to your buddy as you could get, and still freezing, and saying whatever you could think of to keep each other from clattering apart, and that goddamn cold never easing up, just going on and on, until Joe started to fantasize about all kinds of crazy shit, like how warm his blood must somehow still be beneath his skin, or how maybe it might be a good idea to press his face down against the barrel of his machine gun after firing it, how nice that searing heat would feel. So no, there wasn't anything worse than waking up cold. But waking up half suffocated and sweating with warmth wasn't that great either.  
"Jesus," Joe muttered, throwing David's arm off, jamming his shoulder into his chest to get him to roll over. David didn't bother to wake up, the cretin, but at least he moved off a bit, turning onto his stomach, his arms curving up around his head. "What kinda guy," Joe said to no one as he slid out of bed. "What kind of grown fucking man." But he was too foggy-headed to finish the thought.   
He stumbled into the kitchen and put a pot of coffee on, then opened the window over the sink and had a hasty smoke, leaning awkwardly over the counter to get his face as close to the opening as he could, because it was fucking December and he didn't want to stand around outside, and David would get pissy if he caught him smoking, especially in the house. He had read some dumb article a couple years back and gotten all worked up, and had tried telling Joe how they both needed to quit smoking, yesterday. "And here I thought it was gonna make me live longer," Joe had said, but David hadn't been amused. Now whenever Joe tried to enjoy a cigarette he got the eyes and the tight lips, and, when David was feeling really good, the long-ass speeches. It just wasn't worth it, so he had to sneak them in where he could, like it was some sort of criminal act, and this from a pair of guys that sodomized each other regularly.   
The dog came wandering in from wherever the hell she had been, probably chewing up shit in David's office. _Not my problem_ , Joe thought, determined not to look. She stood beside his leg, whining softly, looking up at him with big velvety eyes. "I don't have time for you," Joe said to her, scratching her behind the ears. She followed after him when he went back to the bedroom to get dressed, sitting in the middle of the floor and looking back and forth between him and David hopefully. Joe ignored her, then returned to the kitchen and poured himself a thermos of coffee. He dug around in the junk drawer until he turned up a pen and a piece of paper, wrote David a quick note, _walk the damn dog_ , then hustled into his shoes and coat and left for the shop.  
Turns out, owning a barber shop meant Joe did everything under the fucking sun besides barbering. Funny how his old man had never bothered to mention that fact. These days Joe only did that kind of work on the weekends when it got busy, or when one of his guys didn't turn up. The rest of the time he sat in his closet of an office and dealt with schedules and suppliers. It was alright, once he got used to it. He had a radio, and a nearby bakery that sold all kinds of delicious shit for cheap, and zero graying Greek gods hovering over his shoulder to snatch cigarettes out of his hand. From where he sat behind his desk he could hear the guys talking with the customers, and when he was done working he could join in on the banter or clear the hell out, whichever he liked. But today he wasn't getting out early, or relaxing around the shop, because today he apparently had to deal with a couple of idiot delinquents.   
"What the hell are you two doing?" He asked, after Mitch poked his head in the office and told him his nephews were loitering around outside the shop, and Joe had stepped up front to see that, yeah, they sure as fuck were, standing leaned up side by side against his freshly cleaned glass. Ernie had given him a hopeful, pleading kind of look when he came through the door, but Frankie had looked away, his eyes trained on the passing traffic. "Aren't you supposed to be in school?"  
"It let out early today," Frankie said, still looking fixedly elsewhere.  
"Is that right?" Joe raised a brow at Ernie, who flushed immediately in response, his neck turning splotchy. "Some school, huh?"  
"Yeah," Frankie said challengingly, turning to look at him. "It's like they don't give a fuck about us."  
Well, and what the hell was he supposed to say to that? _No, they probably don't, but get your ass back there anyway_. Or, _Do you know what I was doing at fifteen, do you know how good you've got it?_ But it was a different time for them, and a whole different set of trouble, and anyways Joe had always had his father, his gentle, endlessly patient father, who would never dream of raising a hand to any of his kids, and had always listened to anything Joe had felt like saying as if talking to him was the most important thing he could possibly do that day, or any day. Meanwhile, what did Gertie's kids have? Just Phil, that piece of shit, and he was back in San Francisco, and if Joe had gotten his way he'd be sunk in the bay, a nice soft meal for the bottom feeders.  
"I don't know where you think we are right now," David had said when he came into the room and found Joe reassembling his freshly cleaned pistol, "but the Germans surrendered a while back, and the newest war is eight thousand miles away."  
"There ain't a jury in the world that wouldn't jump up and give me a goddamn standing ovation," Joe muttered, refusing to look at him.  
"You're not a soldier anymore, Joe. You hardly had the right then, and you sure as hell don't have it now."  
"I've got every right," Joe snapped, rolling to his feet, because no one hurt his family, and especially his sisters, and how could anyone do that to Gertie, the sweetest one by far, Gertie who could curse a blue streak but didn't have it in her to harm a fly? And she had refused to answer any of his questions, but fuck, the shame in her eyes when he'd asked her if Phil had ever hit the kids, the way she ducked her head down into her arms as if she couldn't stand for Joe to look at her. Joe hadn't wanted to think about holding a gun for close to twenty years, but it was all he could do that day, standing in the kitchen with Al and Jacob, after Judy and Klara had taken the kids out for ice cream and Gertie had disappeared upstairs, hiding from her own fucking family. Jake and Al were trying to figure out where Gertie and the kids should stay, and Joe was thinking about how loud a single shot from a pistol was, how he'd have to figure out a way to muffle it, or haul Phil's fat ass out someplace where no one would hear.  
"I can't let you leave this room, Joe," David had said, settling himself square in the doorway, and he hadn't, and Joe could admit now that he had been right, because as worthless a human being as Phil was, Ernie and Frankie probably wouldn't be bumming around outside Joe's shop right now if he had killed their father. So no, he wouldn't say any of the things he probably should say, because there were plenty of other places a couple of teenage boys could run off to, but they had come here. Joe wasn't fucking that up.  
"Okay," he said, and they both looked at him, and some of the surliness dropped out of Frankie's face. "Well if you're helping out around here you can start by cleaning your greasy hand prints off my window. Let's go, you know where the closet is." He held the door open. The twins glanced at each other, then followed him inside.  
"Maybe when we're done I can help you in the office?" Ernie asked, as if he actually enjoyed sitting crammed against the edge of Joe's desk and looking over the accounts.   
"Yeah, sure," Joe answered, because the kid was smart and Joe found it boring, so why the fuck not? A few years back, David had started popping around once a week to do the books for him, claiming that he was tired of listening to Joe complain about it all the time. Turned out, a fancy Harvard education in shit that a bunch of dead eggheads wrote wasn't much use when it came to adding and subtracting from a column. Go figure. After a couple of months, Joe had told him to stay the hell away.   
Once the twins were set up outside, standing on either side of the door and focused on the job he'd set them to, Joe stepped back into his office and rang Gertie up.  
"Again?" She said. Joe could picture her standing behind the counter at the convenience store where she worked, trying not to scowl and scare off shoppers.  
"Hey, at least they're sticking together."  
"Yeah, they'll go tied at the hip straight to the penitentiary."  
"Aw, it's normal. You'd be worried if they weren't trying something."  
"That's twice this week. Did David tell you?"  
"No," Joe said, startled. "Tell me what?"  
"How they showed up at your place two days ago. He took them along Christmas shopping and then dropped them off at the house when I got off work."  
"Huh." No, David hadn't told him, the tight-lipped bastard. He couldn't figure why, it wasn't like the guy did anything else with his day worth commenting on, he could at least mention when Joe's family came around. But he would set him straight over it later. "Well." What the fuck would David say, or better yet, Joe's old man? "They just need time, you know? It's been a rough couple of years for them."   
"I know," Gertie said tightly.  
"Jesus, Gert," Joe said, suddenly angry. "For you too. For all of us."  
"Yeah," she said with a stuttering sigh. "Yeah, I know."  
"There's plenty of shit around the shop to keep them busy with. Just come pick them up when you get off."   
"Okay. I gotta go."  
Evil chance seldom comes alone, his oma always said. Joe wasn't superstitious, but looking back he should have known that things had been too good for too long. First Max, dying like that out of goddamn nowhere, just keeling over one day as he was walking out the door to head to work. Al had taken it hard, hell, Joe had too. He and Max went way back. And then all the shit that had been happening to Gertie and her kids behind closed doors started coming out, and Joe and Jake had just gotten them settled in with their folks, and then pop died, and that had just about broken Joe. _Add it to the track_ , he had thought at the time. _Joseph D. Liebgott Cracks Like a Fucking Egg. Part Four_. But he couldn't let on how fucked in the head he was over it, because everyone was looking to him for what to do next, what to do about ma, what to do with the shop, and so there wasn't anything for it but to keep a lid on it, keep putting one foot in front of the other. David had been the only thing that felt good, the only thing that made any sense, and that's when a guy knows he's not doing so hot, when David of all people starts making sense.   
"You want to go with them," he said to Joe, after Joe came home and told him how Al had announced that she was moving to San Bernardino to be closer to Kay, her oldest, who was married and expecting her first kid, and that Gertie had decided to move with her.   
"We both need a change of scenery," Al had said, cool as a cucumber, reaching over to pat Gertie's hand while the rest of them stared. "The house is too empty with Max gone, and Gertie wants a couple hundred miles between her and Phil."  
"No," Joe said in answer to David. "I want them to come to their damn senses and stay here." He was laying stretched out across the couch, his head in David's lap, and David was running his hand up and down his side, slow, the heat of his palm turning Joe liquid. Joe normally wouldn't allow such an obvious caress, but these days it seemed like he couldn't settle unless he had David's hands on him, those methodical, pen and rope roughened hands. He sometimes wondered if it was normal. Not the two of them together: he knew that wasn't normal for all kinds of reasons. But was it normal for two people who had been with each other for as long as they had, rocky roads and all, and at the age they were, standing on either end of their forties, to still have this between them, this need like a magnet that wouldn't let up no matter how many times they snapped together?  
David had been quiet, his attention seemingly caught on the strip of skin along Joe's ribs, but now his other hand came up to curve around the back of his neck. He kneaded gently, and Joe groaned, then got annoyed with himself and glared up at David. He was looking down at him with those ridiculous fucking eyes of his. "We should think about moving there too."  
"What, are you serious?"  
"Why not? Your mother's not an invalid, and Judy and Klara check in on her every day. And Jake's here if something were to happen." He hadn't shaved that morning, and his stubble was crawling its way across his face, shading in the grooves of his cheeks and his square chin. "Al and Gertie need you more than they do. And I know you're getting tired of driving your cab."  
"It's fine," Joe said dismissively. It was work, it wasn't supposed to be a good time, and only someone as breathtakingly entitled as David would think otherwise. "What about the boat?" David still had the Tusitala, and still took it out regularly, although he wasn't as fucking weird about it as he used to be, treating it more like a hobby and less like going to goddamn church. David shrugged, his hand drifting lower, stroking along Joe's stomach and down towards the space between his hips.   
"I suppose I'd sail it back down to Santa Monica. Dock it there, go fishing on the weekends."  
"Weekends? What do those matter when you don't work?" Joe didn't miss an opportunity to needle David over his lack of employment, even if he was secretly proud of him, his Web, a published author. And who would have ever thought it could be so lucrative, writing a book about fucking sharks? Who the hell was even buying the book? But whatever.  
"Fuck you," David murmured, his hand slipping lower. Someone should have given Joe a damn medal for pushing his hand away, for not letting it happen, because nothing was hotter than the way David watched him when they did shit like this, his eyes heavy-lidded, his mouth parting. But Joe needed to think.   
"You wouldn't be able to walk your ass over to the ocean whenever you felt like it," he said, watching him, determined to not lose his shit if David didn't give him an answer that he liked. L.A. had been all flash, and David had hated working for the paper there, but Joe knew how much he had loved his house, loved being on the beach. Then they had moved back to San Francisco, and David still managed to get down to the water nearly every day, and he never said a word about it either way, but Joe knew it wasn't the same.   
"Well," David said, grimacing lightly, his eyes sliding away. "There's what a person wants, and what they need. Right?" He looked back down at Joe, his lips quirking up into a wry smirk. "I think I know the difference at this point."  
_This guy_ , Joe thought, as David's hand wrapped around him, as he leaned his head back against his thigh and let himself enjoy it. _This fucking guy_. It didn't make any sense, but Joe had gotten bored with questioning his good luck years ago. At some point it was just easier to trust it.  
So they moved to San Bernardino, and they had been there for more than five years, and David still seemed happy enough. He was working on another book, but Joe didn't like to think about that, and he swanned around the house like the aging debutant he was, and went for long walks with the dog, and dragged Joe out on the boat just about every week, and Joe hadn't ever imagined his life turning out like this. He had thought he would always be in Oakland, thought he'd have a mess of kids and a job he tolerated and a wife he would be fond of, if never crazy about. But he was crazy about David, it was nuts, how fucking crazy he still was about the idiot. And it felt right somehow, that he had ended up cutting hair like his old man. He would get a funny feeling sometimes, when he picked up a razor and held it just so in his hand. Like he could be anywhere, at any point in his life, sixteen and helping his pop out on a busy day, the radio going in the background, the smell of fresh newspaper and talcum powder, or back on that airfield giving shaves and mohawks, hustling the company for pocket change, anything to keep his hands busy. And now, having his own shop, and having his nephews there, Ernie in the back and Frankie sweeping the floor, it was like...fuck, he didn't know. Like shit was turning out alright.  
_Getting so much better all the time!_ The radio sang.  
_Maybe_ , Joe thought, as he locked the door behind Mitch and set the twins to straightening the place up while they waited for Gertie. _Yeah, I guess it is_.   
After Gertie showed up with Lise in tow and Joe herded the boys into the car and saw them off, he stepped back into the shop to finish closing up before heading home. He turned off the radio, the lights, then stood at the back door and looked the place over, thinking about his old man. Joe had known a lot of great guys, had fought beside and lost more good friends than he liked to recall, but there hadn't ever been anyone who could hold a candle to his father. He had been the only one who seemed to understand, when Joe finally forced himself home, driven there by the stupid need to prove to David that he wasn't a coward, that he could do just as decent a job of picking up the pieces of his life as David had. But staying had turned out to be almost as impossible as coming home had been, and Joe had only managed it by burying himself in work and, eventually, in Peggy and plans for their future, and, when nothing else would do the trick, in David's letters. And then, for reasons he hadn't been able to explain to himself, again, he'd gone to visit David, _again_ , and returned home so shaken up and rattled that he might as well have been back in Belgium, worked over by the cold, black and peeling, and back then only love or hate had kept him upright, and he _did not_ love David so he would have to hate him, he fucking _hated_ him.   
That had been all he could think about, the night he went to Peggy's house and told her the wedding was off. She hadn't believed him at first, and she cried when she finally did, and Joe had barely felt a thing, and that was David's fault too. Then he went home, dropped onto the couch and buried his hands in his hair and thought about how much he'd like to kill David, and that was how his father had found him when he walked in, trembling with it, barely able to breathe around it. He sat down beside him and didn't speak, and Joe didn't doubt for a second that he would sit that way all night if that was what Joe wanted.  
"I couldn't do it, Pop. I'm sorry."  
"Do what, Joseph?" His father asked gently, and if it was possible to be cruel to the man that would have been the moment for it. _What the fuck do you mean?_ Joe wanted to shout. _Couldn't marry her, couldn't cut it_.  
"The right thing," he said.  
"What is the right thing?"  
Fuck if he knew anymore. Nothing was right, was that the answer? When had he last felt right or sure about anything? He had felt it in snatches during the war, so long as he wasn't sitting around with nothing to do but think. He had felt sure of the guys he'd served with, felt certain of his hate for the Germans. Maybe the last time was when he had decided to try for the paratroopers, sitting in his bunk and calculating how much more money he would be able to sock away with the higher pay, and figuring if he was going to be killing Krauts he might as well be killing them with the best. What the hell did that say about him, what the fuck had been wrong with him? Joe propped his elbows on his knees and dropped his face in his hands.  
"Joseph, mein sohn." His father's hand came down on his shoulder. "There is right and wrong, and the words we use to describe them change with the moment. You will never need to apologize to me." He lifted his hand; Joe knew if he looked over at him that he would see him making that open-armed gesture of his. "So this is not your path, so you will choose another."  
"Yeah?" He wasn't going to think about him, he wasn't going to even think his name. "What if they all look the same?" His father sighed, touched his hair lightly.  
"Give it time. It can be a gift, you know, instead of an enemy to grapple against."   
"Says you," Joe said, rolling his eyes as he turned his head in his hands to glare at him. "Everything's a freaking gift to you." But his father only nodded soberly, as if Joe had said something wise.  
And he had been right. Time had helped Joe settle his head, made it easier to accept what his future was going to be. No wife and kids, no David, but family, and the chance to forget how to be a soldier, and that was more than what a lot of guys had. And then a few years later he walked into his parents' dining room, and everything he thought he knew about the rest of his life went up in flames.  
David's car was gone when Joe got home, but that was typical. The book was giving him trouble, and it seemed like at least once a day he had to physically leave the house to get away from it.  
"Quit writing it," Joe had suggested, when David made the mistake of confiding to him how difficult he was finding it to set it all to paper. "We don't need the money." And it made Joe jittery, and he didn't like the expression David was carrying around in his eyes these days, the cold anger that Joe had used to enjoy rousing in him, because it had been the surest sign that he could get to him.  
"It's not about the money," David answered, because nothing was about the money for David, he had never chased it or felt its lack. It still made Joe furious at times, how completely fucking clueless the guy could be about the realities of life. "I need to finish it. If more men had been honest about their experiences, maybe we wouldn't be in the mess we are now."  
"What," Joe scoffed, "you're saying if you had written this twenty years ago we wouldn't be in Vietnam?"   
"No," David said calmly, his voice dropping down into that low, carefully modulated tone he got when he knew exactly what he was wanting to say. "Of course not. But if you had written a book too, and Major Winters, and Buck and Toye and Doc Roe, and," he broke off, gestured with his hand, "and our pilots, and those marines we saw on the newsreels. What if we had all told our stories? I think that could have made a difference." Joe had let it drop. He and David didn't see eye to eye on most things, and the war was one of them. He had given up a long time ago on trying to understand David's motivations for enlisting in the first place. Who the fuck else would volunteer for the Airborne in order to 'bear witness'? Only David. Who else would meander their way across Europe, all stupid smiles and unbelievably blue eyes, veering back and forth between affability and high-handed outrage? Only David, the most ridiculous, pointless, beautiful, honest person Joe had ever known.  
Joe kicked off his shoes and hung his coat on the hook, then patted the dog's head when she trotted up and danced around his legs. "You get your walk?" He said to her, as she followed him into the kitchen. The note he had left David that morning was flipped over, and David had written something on the back in his square, clear hand. Joe grabbed a beer from the fridge, then slid the paper across the counter towards him to read it. It was some kind of poem.  
_And not expecting pardon / hardened in heart anew / but glad to have sat under / thunder and rain with you_  
And then, beneath that,   
_Love you Joe. Back soon._  
"Jesus, what an idiot," Joe said to the dog. "What a sap." He tapped his finger against the paper, then picked it up and carried it to the bedroom, going to the closet and nudging the small box out from the corner with his foot. He crouched down in front of it, grimacing when his knees protested, opened the box and tossed the paper on top of the pile. He started to put it away again, but stopped, because maybe he was an idiot, too. So he pulled them all out instead: the thick stack of letters, the hastily jotted notes, the scraps of paper with the messages crimped and stuffed into the available space. Every word David had ever written him.  
If Joe ever felt compelled to write something about the war, he figured he would just take the contents of this box, copy them down in order, and leave it at that. What else was there to say? It had been hell, made only bearable by the men he'd served with, and David the only good thing to come of it. He would have never had anything to do with a guy like David if it hadn't been for the war, the way it crushed everyone down to the same level. If by some weird chance Joe had happened to meet him under a different circumstance, he wouldn't have given him anything but a good long look, would have dismissed him as an over-educated, empty-headed waste. He would have only seen that genial mask, and never known all the rest waiting beneath, the dry humor, the hot temper that flared to life and died out just as quickly, because David, for all his informed and passionate opinions, was not a fighter. But Jesus, he was strong in his own way, a fucking diamond, hard and bright and capable of weathering whatever the world and Joe threw at him.  
He wouldn't leave any of it out, either. Not a single letter, even the boring ones where all David did was write about his work or what he had been reading. And not a single note, from this dumb poem and all the way back to that first one that Joe had found waiting for him on top of David's typewriter in his apartment in New York. _Getting groceries_ , it had said, _in hopes that you'll be nicer to me if I feed you properly_. Joe hadn't laughed, because he had still been half-asleep, but he had pocketed the note without hesitating or thinking twice about it. No, he would put them all in there, and let them speak for themselves. The years that David had written him regularly, and the gap of time between where he hadn't written at all. And then the point where the letters stopped, replaced by all these little messages, these markers of their life together. He wouldn't add or take away a single thing, and the people who read that book would know how fucking lucky he had been, how he had fought against it and gotten it anyways, this symphony of a life. Joe gathered them up in his hands, testing their weight, then put them carefully away. Dinner wasn't going to cook itself.  
It was chicken soup tonight, because Joe didn't want to have to think too hard about it, and who could complain about hot soup on a cold winter night? Not David, if he knew what was good for him. Joe put a record on and drank his beer while he chopped vegetables. He didn't get attached to places easily, not after up and moving halfway across the country when he was a kid, and especially not after his time in the Airborne. When he finally got home, he'd stayed with his folks for a bit and then bounced back and forth between apartments, because nothing ever felt right. Then those years in L.A., then back in San Francisco with David, and now here, and it was weird, getting attached to a place, feeling like maybe it was actually home. No thanks to David; the guy was oblivious to his surroundings. Joe was the one responsible for the few homey touches the place had: the blanket thrown over the back of the couch that his ma had sent him, the big ugly mirror that he had found at a secondhand shop and hauled home.  
Once the soup was going on the stove, Joe finished off his beer and put another record on. When they were packing up to move down here from San Francisco, David had tried suggesting that they leave their old record player behind, maybe replace it with something newer, more versatile, and then acted like he didn't get it when Joe bit his head off. No fucking way was Joe replacing that record player, ever. Would you ask a guy to get rid of the car that he first scored with the woman of his dreams in? No, David, you wouldn't. Not that Joe was going to say that, he wasn't supposed to be the sentimental one here, Jesus Christ. He tossed himself down onto the couch, had just gotten comfortable, balling the blanket up beneath his head and kicking his feet in time to the music, when the dog got all excited and skittered her way to the door. David walked in a moment later, a light powdering of white dusting his hair and the shoulders of his coat. His eyes landed on Joe, and he beamed, wide and happy.  
"It's snowing," he said, like a kid.  
"Beautiful," Joe said. "Let me grab my mittens, we can build a fort." He fucking hated snow.  
"It won't stick," David said, like that was a bad thing. He went to the window and pulled the blinds up. "But it's nice to look at."  
_For some people_ , Joe almost said, but didn't. He didn't want to think about Bastogne, and he didn't want David to think about it either, standing there at the window and looking all content and shit. Thank God he had missed it, Joe could hardly believe that there had been a point in time where he had thought less of David for not being there. "Want a beer?" He said instead.  
"No," David answered, turning away from the window. He went back to the door to take off his coat and boots. "Grant called for you."  
"Yeah?"  
"I think he just wanted to chat. He said he'd try again tomorrow." David came to the couch and lifted Joe's feet up, settling them in his lap once he was situated. "And we got a letter from Bill, with the date for the next reunion."  
"Big day for Easy." Joe still wasn't sure that it had been the right decision, going to that reunion, letting the company know where he was and how to get a hold of him. He and David hadn't missed one since, and Joe didn't even know if he enjoyed them, really. He never slept well in the weeks leading up to one, what with the thoughts that wouldn't stop and the fucking nightmares that seemed to roll around like clockwork, and he hated it when one of guys tried to bring up someone that wasn't around anymore. And don't get him started on the stupid hoops he and David had to jump through to explain away the fact that they were living together, and was anyone in Easy even buying it anymore? But he liked seeing the guys, liked to know how they were getting on, so maybe it was worth the headache. Yeah, it was worth it. "There something you want to tell me?" He asked, watching David, the way his brow furrowed with what looked like genuine confusion.  
"No?" He said doubtfully.   
"So I guess Frankie and Ernie didn't pop around here a couple of days ago." He pulled his lip to the side to keep it from going up at the instant guilt that poured over David's expression. The guy had a face like a glass window.   
"Oh. Well." David gave him a pained look. "They asked me to not mention it. I thought it would do more harm than good to lie, or to give them the impression that they couldn't trust me." He squeezed Joe's legs. "Why? Did something happen?"  
"Nah. They're just starting to make a habit of it. Showed up at the shop today." The dog put an experimental paw up on the couch and Joe pushed her away. "Heard you took them Christmas shopping."  
"Yes," David answered, on his guard.  
"Get anything for me?"  
"If I did, I know better than to keep it here."  
"It's at Al's, right?" David looked away evasively, and Joe grinned. "Got it. I'll give you a call on Christmas, let you know if I like it."  
"Lieb, please, for once in your life," Christ, Joe loved it when David got that exasperated tone, "try to act your age, and wait until I come home."  
"You'll be hearing from me on Christmas," Joe said in answer, tucking his chin into his shoulder to keep from laughing when David glared at him. Served the guy right, heading home on the holidays; Joe typically wound up needing something to shake him out of a black mood somewhere in those two weeks that he was gone, and ruining David's attempts to keep a secret from him usually did the trick, and these days it wasn't fucking Christmas without calling David up to rub it in after he found it. And anyways, David could act as outraged as he wanted, Joe knew he liked hearing from him. He didn't understand why David bothered going home at all, but they were his family, no matter how incomprehensible they might be to Joe. He had only met David's brother the one time in Los Angeles, and had spoken to his sister a handful of times on the phone when she called for David and Joe happened to pick up. They both had a way of talking that reminded Joe of how David would get right before he lost his temper, as if they could barely move their lips. David insisted that they were okay, but Joe had always gotten the feeling that David simultaneously loved and loathed his family. But whatever. He had Joe's family the rest of the year. Joe dug the heel of his foot into David's crotch to watch his eyes flutter, then swung his legs off him. "C'mon, let's eat."  
"How was work?" David asked, following after him, grabbing bowls from the cupboard when Joe gestured towards them.  
"Fine. How's the book?"  
"It's coming along," David answered warily. Joe didn't usually bother to ask, because he didn't want to have to hear the answer, but recently he'd been thinking that maybe he should, maybe he wasn't showing up for David in a big way by not asking.   
"Think you'll be done with it soon?" He ladled soup into the bowls, handing one off to David and elbowing him in the side to move him towards the table.  
"It's hard to say." David sat down, his eyes too grim, his lips pressed together in thought. "I have it largely written out. I'm just having trouble."  
"With what?" Joe asked, testing the broth. Not too damn bad.  
"Do you really want to talk about this?"   
"I asked, didn't I?" Yeah, he'd been fucking it up, it was obvious from the disbelieving look on David's face. Joe gave an irritated huff to cover the surge of guilt, the impulse to reach over and grab him, shake or kiss him. "What, you blabber on about it all the time, and now that I'm asking you suddenly clam up?"  
"No," David said hastily. "No, I just assumed that you." He stopped, turning his focus on his food. They ate in silence for a few minutes, just the scrape of spoons and the dog shifting beneath the table and a softly tripping guitar on the record player. "I can't find the message behind it," David said eventually. "Probably because there isn't one. It was all so fucking pointless." He looked up at Joe. "It feels wrong. Like I'm missing something."  
"The message, huh?" Joe thought about it a moment, then buried his nose in his soup to hide his expression. "That's the easy part."  
"You think so?" David asked, starting to smile, he must have picked something up in Joe's face. "Let me in on it, then." Joe snorted.  
"I'm not writing your fucking book for you, Web. You figure it out."  
"Alright," David said, a light in his eyes like Joe had challenged him to something, and yeah, maybe he had. "I will." He grinned at Joe, still fucking gorgeous, it was criminal, a guy creeping up on fifty and looking like that. His hair still black, only coming in gray at the temples and sporadically through the stubble on his jaw, his eyes so stupidly blue, and still capable of jolting straight through Joe with a spearing kind of heat that always managed to catch him square in the chest. He liked being outside and active, and it had kept him fit, had roughened his skin and left lines on his face, but that just made him real, instead of the distant memory that Joe had always figured he would eventually become. Joe would maybe resent him for being so perfect, if he wasn't his, if Joe wasn't the lucky bastard who got to take him to bed every night. He had to suddenly grapple against that same old feeling, need so overpowering it almost felt like violent hate, but David had always met him blow for blow when it came to that, until every excuse or evasion was torn away, and they both had to face it. "What are you thinking about?" David asked, his eyes bright with it, the truth of what was between them.  
"Jesus," Joe said, rolling his eyes. "Just eat your damn soup."

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
